essay 002 - print isn't dead
02 august 2026
Scroll through your feed and you'll find magazine collections proudly displayed, long-out-of-print publications changing hands and independent zines flourishing. Print has become a new part of people's visual identity.
There’s a permanence to print in a culture built on endless scrolling. It asks us to pause rather than swipe. That’s what keeps bringing me back to one question.
What does this renewed fascination with print actually tell us about the way we're engaging with culture?
It may be the medium that’s trending, but it isn't the story. The story is what our return to print says about our relationship with culture, memory and meaning.
Print has been part of my life from the very beginning. I started my career in print journalism and, although my practice has broadened, the printed page has remained a constant point of reference.
Part of the appeal has always been physical. I love the object itself. But I've always been equally interested in what those objects reveal about the culture that produced them. They offer something digital culture often struggles to preserve: context.
I've watched something that has always mattered to me suddenly matter to everyone else.
Social media increasingly rewards ownership over understanding. Buying someone else's magazine collection, filling a bookshelf with design monographs or reposting familiar imagery can easily be mistaken for cultural authority. But ownership isn’t enough.
Acquiring cultural objects isn't the same as understanding the culture itself. Somewhere along the way, collecting has become confused with knowing.
That understanding has always informed rudeboard.jpeg. At its core, it's about making editorial choices. Selecting, sequencing and creating connections between visual references. Every inclusion says something. Every omission says something too.
That's why I don't believe collections become valuable simply because they grow larger.
Collections aren't built through acquisition. They're built through attention. Objects can be acquired in an afternoon. Attention cannot.
This distinction is important. It asks us to revisit, compare, question and understand. It transforms print from something we own into something that shapes the way we see. Without that relationship, even the most impressive collection risks becoming little more than storage.
Looking back is essential. Cultural memory matters. Preservation matters. Every generation benefits from people who care enough to safeguard the artefacts.
To me, the difference is simple:
A retrospective asks, What can we learn from this?
Nostalgia asks, Can we go back?
The difference is subtle, but significant.
The artists I continue to return to share something in common. They don't reproduce the past. They understand it deeply enough to extend it. Deana Lawson's photographs feel deeply rooted in history, yet they belong entirely to the future. Arthur Jafa doesn't romanticise the past; he reactivates it.
That's the distinction.
If our relationship with print has taught us anything, it's that culture is currency.
When people look back at the creative work produced in the last decade, what will define it? What visual language will belong unmistakably to this moment? What publications, images and ideas will become the cultural references of tomorrow?
Perhaps that's the real opportunity presented by the resurgence of print: not simply to collect, but to create. Not simply to preserve culture, but to contribute to it.
