The indie sleaze vibes are strong in Jesse Hoffman's photostream. In between flash photos of friends in dweeby outfits and scenes of 2000's manhattan, he shares ironic screenshots from websites and tv shows from simpler internet days. Importantly, none of it feels like he's trying too hard—he was simply documenting the things he saw in real life and on the web to share with his friends.
With the way social media is now, I feel like it's basically impossible to not be hyper-aware of the image you project with each post. "Is this cringe? Does this make me look cool? Does this match my feed? Does it look like I'm trying too hard?" are all questions that swirl around my brain each time I press the share button. (I am embarrassed to admit this.) Jesse's flickr has me wondering if part of the reason for indie sleaze's resurgence is its authenticity. We long to be free from the shackles of social media performativity and return to a time with no set aesthetics, community guidelines, or financial gains to be wary of.
And while the indie sleaze style of photography is definitely coming back, I find that it's missing that authenticity. It's a performance, which isn't inherently bad, but it's not real. People like Jesse weren't trying to recreate an aesthetic; they created their own visual lexicon by capturing their life. It makes me wonder: how will we remember the aesthetics of the late '10s and early '20s a decade from now if we only seem to recycle the same trends of nostalgia over and over again? I suppose this is just the nature of the internet.
At the same time, I get it. Not to get meta, but I'm literally feeding into the very thing I'm questioning by having an entire tiktok account and blog dedicated to my nostalgia. I'm a broken record at this point, but truly, I would have given anything to have been in my early 20s during this era. Jesse's photos make me want to curl up in a ball and scream for being born a few years (okay almost a decade) too late. whatever. here are some of his photos that I like or something:
