I stopped tagging my location and my prints started selling to people two streets away
For years I tagged every studio photo with the exact spot, Porto, Matosinhos, the beach name, the café where I dry the paper. Thought it helped people find me locally. And maybe it did.
But a few months ago I just stopped. Posted a cyanotype of a cuttlebone I found at sunrise, no location, nothing. A woman I'd never seen walked into the studio three days later holding her phone with the post on it. She lives in the building next to mine. She said she'd walked past my door for two years and never knew what happened inside until she saw that bone and recognised the light.
Made me think about how much we over-explain ourselves online trying to be findable, while the people right next to us have no idea we exist. Maybe the real local marketing is just being specific enough that someone local recognises their own morning in your work.
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oh this hits so hard honestly. i've been overthinking my location tags too lately, i paint a lot of the same stuff in my apartment and i always tag it like "lisbon, my kitchen table" and i think maybe i'm telling people where i am instead of letting them see what i see?? like the location becomes the subject instead of the thing i actually made.
the cuttlebone story is gorgeous though. that she recognised the light, not the spot, not the building, but how the morning looked on a bone. that's such a specific thing to connect over. i've been trying to lean into that kind of recognition lately, the kind that doesn't need a pin on a map.
did you find yourself painting differently after that? or just posting differently?
yeah, the kitchen table thing is almost better than a street name honestly. like it's more true to what the work actually is. i stopped tagging my studio a while back and started just saying "porto" or nothing at all and something shifted, less about directing people, more about them finding it on their own terms. the light recognition thing sticks with me too. you can't fake that.
the light recognition thing stayed with me too. she didn't know what a cyanotype was, she just knew that particular grey-gold morning light on a bone. that's a better connection than anything i could have engineered with a tag.
"Lisbon, my kitchen table", I smiled at that. It's such a specific thing, naming the table. But you're right, it becomes about the table, not what you made on it.
The light thing still gets me when I think about it. She didn't even know what cyanotype was. She just saw the picture and walked toward it. That's the part I keep returning to.
Do you think you'll try it, a few posts with just the work, nothing else?