Welcome to the 100th issue of the NYC Photo Community Newsletter! I'm happy I've made it this far with a project I started on a whim in September of 2019, and I'm very grateful for all of you who have chosen to come along for the ride. Thank you.  I'm especially grateful to the scores of fantastic photographers who took the time to share their work and thoughts with the community. 

Any time you start a long-term endeavor, you reach a point where you know that to keep going, you need to shake things up, adjust your direction, and stretch a little higher or further than you have so far.  It's taken me a while to get there, but I'm pleased to announce I've finally taken some steps to make the newsletter better, more useful, more user-friendly, and more readable. My goal is to create a more interesting place to connect with and be inspired by other photographers who share our enthusiasm for the medium. In short, it's infrastructure week here at the newsletter. Here's what I did and why:

—I made a brand new website for the NYC Photo Community. Much of the basic structure I envision for the website is up and live, but be warned, as of now, it's a website in early days, like a spring chick pecking its way out of an eggshell, but not quite hopping around yet. There's a ways to go still, and a lot more content I want to add. I know with time and feedback we'll get there soon.  Having a unique website is going allow for a lot of positive changes, both immediately, and long-term.  Right away it's going to be a much better platform to showcase photography and organize the kind of material this newsletter has presented in the past into a more durable and useful way. Longer-term, I plan to launch a print/zine/book/poster store on the site to help support both the NYC Photo Community and the artists who've been a part of it since its inception. I also hope to start some kind of forum where we can more easily connect online but haven't settled on the means to accomplish that yet.

—I've re-designed the typography and colors of the newsletter to be simpler, cleaner, and hopefully more readable. The design was overdue for an update, especially the old logo which always reminded me a little too closely of a coronavirus particle. That definitely had to go!  

—Like this editor's note, the newsletter had gotten far too long. To address this, most of the newsletter will now consist of brief summaries of content, and readers can click through to see or read further as they wish. Since this is the inaugural edition of the new format, I'm keeping the full editor's note this week, but future issues will just have a short excerpt and a link to the full note.  The same will go for all sections of the newsletter. This change is the biggest, and for some, it will not be welcome, so this was a change that did not come lightly for me. After a lot of thought, I believe it's the right choice and will help people find material they're most interested in more easily. I'm particularly happy that it will give a much better format to present the work and ideas of the featured photographer each week.  (I love this week's feature on Patrice Helmar!)

All for now, but I'd love to hear your thoughts on the changes and plans for the future.  Just hit reply to this email to drop me a line, or use the contact form on our website.  Thanks again for being part of this, and I'm looking forward to the next 100 issues!

❤️James Prochnik The NYC Photo Community | Issue 100 | January 21 - 28