Iterations

Епизоди

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  The Archive as a Listening Device 26.08.2026 7мин

  I’ve always thought of archives as places where things go when they’re finished. Sort of a record of the past or a cold storage collection of what mattered after the fact. But lately, I’ve started to think of an archive differently. Maybe it isn’t just a repository for things that stop being useful. Maybe it’s also where they start asking new questions. A few weeks ago, I picked up a scanner, which I wrote about in a previous Iteration. Since then, I’ve been scanning all sorts of things without much of a plan. Things like magazine covers, vintage ephemera, and old photographs. I’m not looking for anything in particular, I’m just following my curiosity and trusting that some of these pieces might surface later. Over the last few newsletters, I’ve tried to explore different ways of paying attention. For example, the camera says: “Pay attention to this moment.” The scanner says: “Look closer. There is more here than you thought.” I think the archive says: “Now sit with what you found long enough for it to tell you something you couldn’t hear (or see) at first.”CONNECT WITH MEVisit my Website: https://jefferysaddoris.comGet my Newsletter: SubscribeEmail me: [email protected]
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  A Game of Noticing 13.08.2026 7мин

  So there I was, looking through stacks of receivers, DVD players, and the odd VCR when I spotted something I didn’t recognize. It was big — big enough to cover nearly two receivers. A CD player was sitting on top of it and when I lifted it off, I think I actually gasped, which Adrianne says is a sure sign that you’ve found something good. It was a flatbed scanner made by a company called Viisan, a brand I’d never actually heard of. Epson? Sure. HP? Of course. Microtek? Absolutely. Viisan? Not so much. And like I said, it was big. Most flatbed scanners are letter or legal-sized, but this one was A3, which means it can scan tabloid-sized magazines like my old issues of LIFE and Look in one pass.LINKSGoodwillHomer Laughlin chinaBroyhill Brasilia side tableSansui 9090Marantz 2270ViisanLIFELookAffinityPrint Size CalculatorCONNECT WITH MEVisit my Website: https://jefferysaddoris.comGet my Newsletter: SubscribeEmail me: [email protected]
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  An Instrument for Paying Attention 31.07.2026 7мин

  When I was a kid, the camera only came out for special occasions. A single roll of film might last months, sometimes longer. Most of the time the camera lived in a cupboard until there was a reason to bring it out. Birthdays. Christmas. Vacations. Graduations. Film wasn’t something you wasted, so every frame had to justify itself. Back then, the camera itself felt almost mysterious. My father loved machines of every kind, especially engines, and while I didn’t inherit his expertise, through him I became fascinated by how things worked. But a camera seemed different. It wasn’t just a machine. Somehow, it could stop time. It could preserve a moment long after the moment had passed. I didn’t understand how it worked at the time, only that it felt capable of something almost magical.What’s your instrument? What do you find yourself noticing? How does that curiosity find its way into your work — or your life?I’d love to hear from you. Email me at [email protected] 124GWilliam EgglestonPentax Super ProgramMaarten RotsCONNECT WITH MEVisit my Website: https://jefferysaddoris.comGet my Newsletter: SubscribeEmail me: [email protected]
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  The Website I Don't Need to Finish 24.07.2026 7мин

  I've built more personal websites than I care to count, starting with my first one back in 1997. For years, the goal was simple — keep it fresh, keep it updated, keep the portfolio current enough to land the next job. I picked that habit up partly from Jakob Nielsen, the usability researcher who was convinced sites needed to feel alive to repeat visitors, and I ran with it — random hero images in early Javascript, the same trick later in ActionScript when Flash took over, even a menu I built as a cloth simulation in LightWave 3D for a site about Western furniture I designed with my dad.This time around, I'm talking about what changed. My last major site overhaul was the move to Carrd back in 2021, and the WordPress redesign I've been slow-walking for months isn't slow because I'm stuck — it's slow because the urgency that used to drive it just isn't there anymore. I'm not trying to convince anyone to hire me. I'm not chasing what's current. I'm more interested now in curating and archiving the work I've already done than in creating something new to prove a point.LINKSJakob NielsenAdobe (Macromedia) Flashuniversalstudios.comCarrdLightwave 3DBlenderMy 3D Cloth Demo in BlenderGary VeeCONNECT WITH MEVisit my Website: https://jefferysaddoris.comGet my Newsletter: SubscribeEmail me: [email protected]
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  A Pattern So Grand and Complex 15.06.2026 9мин

  "We're not geniuses, we're just regular guys who are interested in things." — Neil PeartOn August 1st, 2015, Rush played their final show at the Forum in LA. I was there, just as I had been for so many Rush shows over the years. That show felt different — special in a way that we weren’t really prepared for. For months leading up to it, there were rumors that this would be the last show and after the final encore of “Working Man,” when Neil came out from behind his drum kit to take a bow with Alex and Geddy, the rumors became true. Over 40 years and thousands of shows, Neil never took a bow out front — instead, he just put down his sticks and quietly left the stage. As he wrote in “Limelight,” he simply couldn’t pretend a stranger was a long-awaited friend.I've been following a thread for over 40 years that started with a borrowed Rush record and led me to books, ideas, and work I couldn't have predicted. This iteration is about where that thread goes when you really pull it.LINKSRushRush live 6/7/26 in Los Angeles (Full Show)Neil Peart “Innerview” w/Jim Ladd (1980)Neil Peart’s last interview w/ Jim Ladd (2015)Neil Peart on Moving Pictures w/StromboRush Article ArchiveNeil Peart’s Favorite Books of All TimeHugh SymeRoger DeanStorm ThorgersonTaken by Storm: The Art of Storm Thorgerson and HipgnosisMick RockCONNECT WITH MEVisit my Website: https://jefferysaddoris.comGet my Newsletter: SubscribeEmail me: [email protected]
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  A Way of Living 31.05.2026 6мин

  For most of my life, I’ve been trying to reconcile two very different ideas about success. One was rooted in practicality, achievement, and outcomes. The other was rooted in curiosity, learning, and exploration.In this episode, I look back at a question my mother asked me during my senior year of high school, the unexpected lessons hidden in a lifetime of creative work, and why I’ve come to realize that what I wanted was never really a career at all. It was a way of living.CONNECT WITH MEVisit my Website: https://jefferysaddoris.comGet my Newsletter: SubscribeEmail me: [email protected]
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  What Rust Remembers 06.05.2026 10мин

  "Sometimes the thing you’re skilled at needs to be broken a little before it can surprise you again."For the past several years, I’ve primarily identified as a painter, despite the fact that the most consistent work I’ve done is writing. That said, lately I’ve had the uncomfortable thought that I might not want to paint anymore — at least not the way I’ve been doing it. Not because I’ve lost interest entirely, but maybe because I haven’t lost it enough. I can pretty consistently make paintings that “work” on some level, and, honestly, that might be part of the problem.CONNECT WITH MEVisit my Website: https://jefferysaddoris.comGet my Newsletter: SubscribeEmail me: [email protected]
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  Small Is Still Significant 05.03.2026 6мин

  Lately I’ve been feeling the weight of how complicated everything seems — I even wrote a bit about it in the last Iteration. It seems that the scale of it all — the speed, the certainty, the volume — can often make even small efforts feel almost invisible. I’ve caught myself wondering whether the things that I make or the conversations I have matter in any “real” way, and honestly, that unsettles me. And I suspect I’m not the only one who’s felt that.CONNECT WITH MEVisit my Website: https://jefferysaddoris.comGet my Newsletter: SubscribeEmail me: [email protected]
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  You Have to Start Making Decisions 27.01.2026 9мин

  Towards the end of last year, I started thinking about building a new website for myself. Not just another vanity site (although I’ve built plenty of those), but more of an archive of the various things I’ve done over my career and a hub where I can share stories around what I’m thinking about and what I’m working on that aren’t dependent on The Algorithm. After years of inconsistent, and if I’m being honest, fairly half-hearted efforts to play the social media game, I’m finally done. I have no more interest in chasing likes or followers or the ever-elusive “brand deal.” I just want to make stuff in my quiet little studio and write about what I make — but also, and maybe more importantly, about what others are making, doing, and thinking about. In fact, in many ways, I kind of want my making to be a byproduct of what others are making, and maybe that includes you.CONNECT WITH MEVisit my Website: https://jefferysaddoris.comGet my Newsletter: SubscribeEmail me: [email protected]
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  Let Go Lightly 29.12.2025 8мин

  About 18 months ago, I started seeing a therapist. I had gotten to a place that I’ve only really been once before and Adrianne encouraged me — actually, she implored me — to talk with a therapist. She once said to me, “Every day, I’m terrified that I’m either going to come home and not find you, or worse, that I will.” I’m not going to lie, that hit pretty hard. I knew I was in a dark place, but we often think that we are the only ones who know just how bad it really is — that we are somehow hiding it from the rest of the world. It’s not true, of course, but that was me in that moment, and to hear the person I love the most in the world say that to me…let’s just say that it shone a light on the dark that I felt surrounded by. So for the past year and a half, I’ve been having the sessions and doing the deep work of unlearning what I had learned and letting go of some of the limiting beliefs and behaviors that have seemed so hell bent on keeping me out of the light.CONNECT WITH MEVisit my Website: https://jefferysaddoris.comGet my Newsletter: SubscribeEmail me: [email protected]
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  The Weight of Waiting 23.09.2025 7мин

  It took a bit to fire up, but once it did, the familiar rumble of my Dad’s 1974 Ford F100 took me right back to my childhood summers. As Art slowly backed the truck off of the trailer, Adrianne commented, “It’s smaller than I thought it would be, given how large it looms in your history.” Indeed, I thought. One of my earliest memories of this truck is of waking up on the bench seat at Buckskin State Park on the Arizona side of the Colorado river. It was cold that morning — though it was light, the sun hadn’t yet crested the red rock hills that bordered the campground to the East. Dad and my stepmother Linda were both awake after having spent the night in sleeping bags in the bed of the truck. Dad had made a small fire that was crackling and popping and I remember the faint smell of coffee on the chilly morning air.CONNECT WITH MEVisit my Website: https://jefferysaddoris.comGet my Newsletter: SubscribeEmail me: [email protected]
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  Style, Stunts, and a Tiny House 02.09.2025 4мин

  I’ve shared this story before, and regardless of whether it’s true or just the stuff of photographic legend, it’s so good that I think it bears repeating every so often. The story goes that a photographer was presenting his portfolio to the great Jay Maisel. He asked Jay how he could take more interesting pictures, to which Jay immediately replied, “become a more interesting person.” It may sound trite, but I think it’s often easy for makers to become myopic in terms of the types of things that inspire them. Painters are often looking at other painters, photographers look at other photographers, musicians are often listening to other musicians, and so on. If you’re always looking (or listening) to what’s familiar, the odds of you arriving at something that’s unfamiliar (even if it’s only unfamiliar to you), are pretty slim, which is why it can be helpful to look outside of your comfort zone for inspiration. I’m interested in almost everything so as you might imagine, my feeds are pretty eclectic. While I’ve gotten away from posts like this over the years, I think I’d like to jump back in and offer up an occasional look at some of the things that have caught my attention, and might catch yours.LINKSLong Hot Summers / The Story Of The Style CouncilMubi interview with Lee PaceThe incredible tiny home of Masato IgarashiYou can find all of the links I mention in this Iteration on my Substack.CONNECT WITH MEVisit my Website: https://jefferysaddoris.comGet my Newsletter: SubscribeEmail me: [email protected]
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  Making and Money 27.08.2025 8мин

  For a long time now — years, in fact — I’ve leaned toward the belief that I deserve to be paid for the creative work I do. And to be clear, I don’t think that’s unreasonable, at least not from a certain point of view. After all, in a capitalist system that’s sort of how it works, right? You do a job, you earn money, you buy things. On the other side, goods and services cost money and we generally accept that premise. Cars, houses, a gallon of milk, a bucket of chicken — whatever it is, we accept that acquiring those things is transactional. I exchange the money I earn for the thing that you produce. The same goes for services like electricity, gas, your phone bill, or internet access. That’s just how the system works. But there are gray areas. Some types of goods and services seem to be more or less exempt from that agreement — namely creative ones. Music, movies, and software often fall into that bucket. And, to make it more personal, art.CONNECT WITH MEVisit my Website: https://jefferysaddoris.com Get my Newsletter: SubscribeEmail me: [email protected]
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  I Buried Another Bird 30.06.2025 4мин

  Yesterday, I had a heart-wrenching experience. I was out for a morning walk with Adrianne and Cooper when I spotted a bird flailing in the grass under a tree. As I got closer, it struggled to escape, its life force fading away. When it finally stopped moving, I knelt down and tried to comfort it with a damp leaf (Adrianne advised against touching it directly due to the bird flu). Watching it die right before my eyes was incredibly painful. I still don’t know what happened, but it clearly had endured some serious trauma. Tears welled up in my eyes as I confessed to Adrianne, “I hate this.” She replied, “I know, but in its final moments, you showed it kindness and love.”A NOTE: I know this isn’t the usual fare for Iterations, but I think quiet moments like this can be just as important as the big existential ones. I have dozens of these types of vignettes — sometimes it’s just me taking notes on my life and the observations and feelings are just for me, but other times, like this one, I think they are worth sharing.CONNECT WITH MEVisit my Website: https://jefferysaddoris.com Get my Newsletter: SubscribeEmail me: [email protected]
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  Little Beasts and Other Pleasures 02.06.2025 11мин

  Last week, I got a text message from my friend Michelle, who works at the National Gallery of Art. “Lunch tomorrow or Thursday?” followed by “Come see the movie in Little Beasts. It starts at the top of every hour. I would love to discuss it with you.” Not only was Michelle one of the first people I met when I first visited DC in 2014, since then, she’s become a close friend and the National Gallery has come to be my happy place in DC. In fact, some of the best art and photography shows I’ve ever seen, including Sally Mann: A Thousand Crossings (Catalog), Gordon Parks: The New Tide, 1940-1950 (Catalog), Outliers and American Vanguard Art (Catalog), The 70s Lens, and Mark Rothko: Paintings on Paper (Catalog), to name just a few, have all been at the National Gallery. I’ve also learned about artists I’d never heard of before, like Rachel Whiteread, Philip Guston, James Castle, and Elizabeth Catlett, among others. And in nearly every case, when I’ve had the chance to walk through a show with Michelle, through her knowledge and experience of art and materials, I’ve come away with a deeper understanding and a greater appreciation of the nuances of both art and artists.CONNECT WITH MEWebsite: https://jefferysaddoris.comInstagram: @jefferysaddorisEmail: [email protected]
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  The Ballad of the Benches 27.05.2025 9мин

  Whether it’s a sheet of old plywood resting on a couple of sawhorses or a fastidiously crafted hardwood masterpiece, the workbench has long been the centerpiece of studios, workshops, garages, and maker spaces of all kinds.Of the many standout features of our house, I think I was most excited about the multiple basement spaces that I would be able to use as studios for the different things I do. The previous owners were makers — she was a painter and he was a woodworker whose wood shop occupied one of the basement spaces. When we bought our house in 2016, I remember telling Adrianne that I wanted to make one of the spaces my paint studio and that I would make some benches “on day one.” Well, day one didn’t happen, nor did week one, month one, or year one. In fact, it’s taken me nearly nine years to finally build benches for my studio. So what happened?See the photos I reference in this episode on Substack: The Ballad of the BenchesCONNECT WITH MEWebsite: https://jefferysaddoris.comInstagram: @jefferysaddorisEmail: [email protected]
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  It’s Still Just a Tool 28.04.2025 9мин

  The other day, I was going through my archive of work ahead of a website redesign, and I found a blog post that I wrote in 2014 that’s sort of an homage to my all-time favorite camera and how after finally acquiring one, I couldn’t bring myself to actually use it. Ten years later, I think the post is still relevant to how some photographers and artists have a tendency to fetishize the tools they use. I know that was me once. For what it’s worth, I think photography is unique in that, because it’s art and science, the potential proficiency of the craft often gets conflated with having the “right” gear. The irony is that it really is the purposeful practice of using our gear, whatever it is, that allows us to get better — to see better. I bought my first SLR in 1982 and I have enjoyed taking pictures ever since. Over the past 40+ years, I’ve used a bunch of different cameras and I’ve enjoyed almost all of them for different reasons. But the one thing that they have in common is the ability to look at the world through a viewfinder — and for me, that’s where the marrow is. As convenient as it is to have an iPhone camera in my pocket that captures fantastic pictures, I love the restriction of a viewfinder and I always have. It lessens the visual noise of the world (to a greater or lesser degree depending on what lens I’m using, of course) and it allows me to practice seeing. In fact, it demands it, doesn’t it? After all, you’re only given a tiny swatch of the world, surrounded by black. What you put in that swatch is up to you, whether you’re observing a scene or creating one from scratch. Photography allows us to impose a point of view on the world around us, or to build one from our imaginations that shows a world we want to see.See the photos I reference in this episode on Substack: It's Still Just a ToolCONNECT WITH MEWebsite: https://jefferysaddoris.com Instagram: @jefferysaddorisEmail: [email protected]
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  It’s Okay to be Disappointed 07.04.2025 12мин

  I love making things, whether that means making a conversation with someone or making a piece of art or writing, and getting to do that fairly unfettered is a massive privilege and it’s not wasted on me. That said, it’s okay to be disappointed in what you make — and maybe not disappointed with the end product itself, but in the reception or how it gets received. It’s okay to be disappointed that other people don’t love it as much as you do — because you poured yourself into it, so of course you love it. But then when you release it into the world and the world just shrugs, it’s okay to be disappointed with that.CONNECT WITH MEWebsite: https://jefferysaddoris.com Instagram: @jefferysaddorisEmail: [email protected]
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  Going Back to Move Forward 07.03.2025 7мин

  NOTE: To see the photos that I reference in this episode, see the post on my Substack.On one of our recent morning walk and talks, a group of photographers and I were talking about how much worse Instagram has gotten over the past few years in terms of exposure and engagement. We all agreed that it seems like most photographers we’ve spoken to about it have very similar feedback. Subscribers, reach, and engagement are all a fraction of what they used to be. And the platform that was once all about sharing images no longer seems to care about images at all — instead they prioritize short-form video in a desperate attempt to compete with TikTok and YouTube. But in the process, I think the platform has lost its way and has just become a vapid mechanism to spoon-feed ads to users. To be clear, there are still a bunch of terrific artists and photographers on Instagram — which is the main reason I haven’t left — but that’s not what gets served up to me by the algorithm. Even the people I follow are in my feed less and less, which makes very little sense to me. I’ve told you “this is the work I’m interested in” and yet that’s not what you give me. So the whole experience just keeps getting more and more disappointing — and we haven’t even talked about the “Tech Bro” leadership, which is a whole other thing.One of the photographers in the conversation asked whether I’d tried Flickr as an alternative. I told him that I used to be pretty active on Flickr — especially when I was still teaching Photoshop — but honestly, I don’t think I’ve logged in since 2017 or 2018 when SmugMug bought the platform. I said that I’d really been enjoying the upswing in artists and photographers on Substack so I hadn’t really considered other alternatives, especially one that in my mind had been all but dead for years. Still, he encouraged me to give it a look and later that afternoon, I was kind of amazed to see that my old login credentials still worked. The homepage feed looks different than I remember it, which is probably a good thing. What surprised me the most is that when I clicked on “Photostream” in the “You” dropdown, I still had more than 300 photos that I was sure I had deleted, but I’m so glad that I didn’t. It was amazing to see some of the things that I was focusing on from 2007-2011. Most of the photos are of architectural details, which I still love to photograph, but many of my photos from that time are street portraits and I remember the stories around every one of them.CONNECT WITH MEWebsite: https://jefferysaddoris.com Instagram: @jefferysaddorisEmail: [email protected]
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  Get Out of Your Way 08.02.2025 7мин

  Reinvention is tough. Disrupting old patterns of beliefs or behaviors is tough. Even when we finally decide to disrupt the flow of familiarity, the fear of the unknown that awaits us can be paralyzing. I know that it has been for me. But one of the things that my therapist routinely encourages me to do is to sit with discomfort — to force myself to pause and breathe and stave off the instinct to move into “fight or flight” mode. In sitting with the discomfort or the pain or fear, we reduce its power and we might be more able to move through it to whatever is waiting on the other side. For me, I think that’s the possibility of making more work that I find interesting, finding an audience that will value it, and becoming more connected with a broader community of artists and makers.LINKSBetter Than EzraKevin Griffin From Better Than Ezra Advice On SongwritingDo schools kill creativity? | Sir Ken Robinson | TEDKevin Griffin (Wikipedia)The Greatest Song by Kevin GriffinCONNECT WITH MEWebsite: https://jefferysaddoris.com  Instagram: @jefferysaddorisEmail: [email protected] to Almost Everything with Jeffery Saddoris in your favorite podcast app. You can also subscribe to my newsletter on Substack.