disORDER7

COMPULSION continues in the enduring spirit of the disORDER concept: an exploration of how photographers capture, interpret, and organize a seemingly endless and chaotic world. Or, more simply, how we find "order" in "disorder."

This edition is built around two primary compulsions.

The first began with the selection of photographers: a compulsion to collaborate.

Rather than seeking out every contributor individually, three photographers who had previously participated in disORDER were each asked to invite another photographer they personally knew and believed would want to take part. The intention was to loosen the curator's control over the project and allow new perspectives to enter through the choices of other artists, photographers, and, in some cases, documentarians.

Although disORDER has always operated within a loose thematic framework, COMPULSION pushes that openness further. Some of the photographers included here might never have otherwise entered the curator's orbit. Their inclusion became part of the expansion itself, allowing the project to develop beyond the perspective of any single person.

The second compulsion comes from the photographs themselves.

Each photographer brings their own instincts toward subject, timing, repetition, framing, sequencing, layout, and visual rhythm. What someone repeatedly notices-or cannot resist photographing and sharing-becomes a visual experience that can also reveal something of the photographer behind it. The same is true of sequencing. To place one photograph beside another is already to create a relationship between them.

The combination of these two compulsions gives this chapter of disORDER a different character. The viewer is invited not only to consider the photographs for their subjects, contexts, and meanings, but also to consider how the photographers themselves arrived here.

This is not a collection assembled entirely through the taste of a single judge or curator. It is, in part, a chain of creative decisions: one photographer leading to another, one perspective introducing the next. In that sense, COMPULSION becomes as much about collaboration and photographic community as it is about photography itself.

From a creative standpoint, each photographer lends their eye to the book and offers a different way of seeing, feeling, interpreting, and organizing the world. Some sections may feel visually consistent with previous editions of disORDER, while others may feel noticeably different. Rather than treating those differences as interruptions, consider how the interruption itself might broaden the experience-disrupting expectations, changing the rhythm, or opening another way of seeing.

COMPULSION moves eclectically between intimate and outward-facing documentary, sharp and blurred visual choices, natural and urban environments, aesthetic minimalism and visual chaos, quiet observation and confrontation, unspoken events and narrative clarity.

There is no expectation that every photograph, sequence, or approach will appeal equally to every viewer. That would defeat much of the purpose.

Rather than being "something for everyone," COMPULSION offers many things for someone who enjoys photography-and perhaps, more importantly, many different ways of looking.

Enjoy.