social comment photography

What we witness may not be "newsworthy" but that doesn't mean we shouldn't attract attention. Take note, and take notes.

During neoliberalism, democracy in America has devolved into a business with voters as consumers. The products (our choices, whether they be options for candidates or legislation) are manufactured for us by professionals who are fat and happy either way it turns out. It's no wonder that what most people really want is rarely if ever reflected in laws that pass.

Political Operatives Push Tax Protestors' Buttons. Image and text Copyright © 2009 by Marshall Mayer.

Welcome to take-note.com, a social imaging collective building a movement to reframe and change our mediated experience by getting exposure, making news, and socializing attention.

why: our problem

Since the '70s, global political, economic, technological, and social systems have devolved for the vast majority of us while we were told, "There is no alternative." The rich and powerful, who respect no personal or political boundaries, have been actively reorganizing nearly every aspect of our lives for their exclusive political, economic, social, and technological benefit. Neoliberal capitalism is the world we grew up in, but not what we want to see for our—or our children's—future. While billionaires build spaceships to colonize the moon and other planets, they don't care about any of the creatures they leave behind.

Digital images have become the primary way we understand the world, but our first-person, everyday alienation is rendered invisible to each other by algorithms. Never noted in the corporate media are our social isolation, our anxiety, our precariousness in a society where increasing private income and wealth inequality amplifies economic and social insecurity, and political impotence. Our stories are never told, we rarely see each other's lives.

Corporate "news" (calling itself news or not; whether broadcast on television, in print, or online) is not our narrative. Corporate media and their politicians will never pay attention to us; we exist only as consumers in their markets. Corporations, the rich, and their politicians exist only to perpetuate their own addiction to money, power, and inherited privilege. They take what we make, and always a bit more—including our freedom and democracy.

We're left disillusioned: nothing will ever change. Many of us can't envision any alternative. Rather, we accept the narrative that is manufactured for us. The latest neoliberal "normalcy" of diminished expectations—before, during, or after our politicized fight with a virus and the ongoing slow-motion fascist coup—is not a pretty picture, unless most of us change the equation.

It's going to take the people, time, and power to break the news. Share your story. Let's get exposure, make news, and socialize attention!

here: our solution

take-note.com invites you to participate in a disruptive approach with a smartphone:

When one is walking about with a camera, one has almost the duty to be attentive.—Julio Cortazar in Blow-Up.

Take notes. take-note.com is first and foremost about the process of critically engaging your everyday world using a camera. Most of us now routinely carry a camera, on our phones. Use it to take notes about your narrative. "What's wrong with this picture?" Face your world to redefine the selfie. Get exposure!

Reframing is social change.—George Lakoff in Don't Think of an Elephant!

See something? Say something! Your first-person narrative is not always how it appears at first glance. Everyone intuitively knows what a good headline is (you've read enough of them, in print or online), and you know how they can draw attention. Write leading language to frame/reframe your notes: what’s your take? It's a question of your priorities and values. Make news!

A meme is an idea, behavior, or style that spreads from person to person within a culture.Wikipedia

Define our audience. Post your notes here, and together we'll promote them to other social networks online and on land (the most note-worthy will appear on our front page, and thus promoted elsewhere). We are most interested in promoting notes that will engage others in this process of creating a new socially constructed reality on the internet—a class consciousness—where the wealthy and powerful no longer appropriate our democracy and freedom. Socialize attention!

Pay attention to socialize attention. You'll know you are successful when your notes do not illustrate someone else's story but explain your world to us. It's your social comment photography.*

how: our commitment

Over time, take-note.com will:

  • Develop the platform to make your notes fast and easy to publish online. Of course, we'll start by building the capacity of this website to quickly and easily add your notes, regardless of when you take notes. But, with sufficient crowd-sourced support, we'll also explore building a mobile app for you and your audiences to directly connect with each other.
  • Establish relationships with other publishers, including social networks and bloggers. It's really hard to find social comment photography (or photographers) on the internet (an algorithm is likely the cause), so together we will make it easier to expand our audience by distributing notes in new ways, such as memes, field notes, and front-page news. We'll know we are making an impact when we realize "if the news is important, it will find me", unmediated by Big Tech.
  • Cultivate the community of like-minded individuals who share with us our passion to re-envision our future by "leaving the culture without leaving the country"to "live within the truth". Elites will ignore image democrats until we force them to pay attention to us. There is power in our numbers, but only if we are organized for action in solidarity with each other. We will prioritize efforts that reframe community organizing campaigns to build power.

take-note.com is free and open. Because capitalism is the problem, we are not developing a monetized marketplace of notes. We do not market the site, nor do we collect visitor data to sell to advertisers. There will never be any advertising or commissions here!

Rather, we reject capitalism because at its core it involves the [ownership and] control by some of the time, creativity, and potential of others. We understand, however, that some note takers do need to make a living from their images: contact us about how we can work together.

now: your next steps

The most political decision you make is where you direct people's eyes. In other words, what you show people, day in and day out, is political.—Wim Wenders, The Act of Seeing.

If you like our definition of the problem, our approach, and our commitment, here are three immediate ways to get involved:

  • Share notes published here (including this page) throughout your networks. You know what to do: be social. (Please do not send us any photos "enhanced" by AI.)
  • Use your phone's camera and your thumbs to thoughtfully comment on your new "normal." Take note, and take notes.
  • When you want to share your notes to socialize attention via take-note.com, contact us. It's OK if it takes a while. We’ll be here. 

What you see now on take-note.com (the notes taken by Marshall Mayer, take-note.com's founder) is not the only way to take notes. Rather, it’s a unique point of view and represents an evolving attempt to live up to the take-note.com strategy. above. You will have your own point of view. Share your story! "Whoever has the best stories will conjure that community."

We are what our attention is. A core imperative of social control is that the audience-nation's attention is must always be on the dominators, not on us.—Gene Youngblood, Secession from the Broadcast: The Internet and the Crisis of Social Control

* Social comment photography, in our view, is not the same as photojournalism, documentary photography, or social documentary photography, all of which, though valid ways of seeing, almost exclusively strive to tell "objective" third-person narratives. All of us can support each other, however, and we are doing that at trust.photography. Join us!