Laura Havlin, Freelance Editor & Content Strategist

💭 Thoughts on self respect & authorship, the return of text, and thinking more critically about the images around us.

Laura Havlin is an editor and content strategist in London, originally from Greater Manchester. Previously, she’s been Head of Content at creative industry organization D&AD, Senior Editor at photographic agency Magnum Photos, and Acting Editor at cultural video platform NOWNESS. She is currently freelance, working on projects in the culture, creative and photography industries. 

🎯 Current focus 

I recently embarked on a new career chapter. In my first month of being freelance I’ve got to work on some cultural research projects, content and strategy in the photography and creative fields, and I’m writing more. I’m excited about revisiting what I find most rewarding: delving into visual culture.

📰 The ‘return of text’ and what it means for legacy media

I’ve been thinking about the apparent ‘return of text’ and how it aligns with parallel discourse around the ‘trusted voice’ and legacy media. The brilliant MORNING STUDIO’s Substack Burn After Reading recently published a post all about ‘how text is reclaiming its cultural throne in the era of endless scrolling’. Creative strategist Letty Cole wrote, “We’ve reimagined and recontextualised images at such a rate that we’re starting to lose grip of their meaning, and the growing prevalence of AI generated content is only muddying the waters further,” going on to say, “We’ve already seen a renewed interest in legacy media that values written reporting, particularly newspapers and magazines, which represent (rightly or not) trustworthy sources of information and genuine, hard-earned, clout.”

This reminded me of something Nilay Patel said on an episode of the Ezra Klein Show podcast earlier this year that has stuck with me: “I think the New York Times means something, it pins some value to your name, but the institution has to protect that value. I think that stuff is still really powerful, and I think as the flood of AI comes for our distribution networks, the value of having a powerful individual who curates things for people, combined with a powerful institution that protects their integrity actually will go up.”

For those of us involved in writing, commissioning and publishing, who've witnessed our industry change dramatically over the past decade, who have been told ‘learn to code’, it is quite satisfying to think the work that we value really seems to be getting recognised, as AI content calls into question how much we can trust what we see and read. This tweet argues why we even read in the first place, and what we love by having AI do it for us.

“One of the pleasures of reading is how each sentence is a fractal in your consciousness, connecting someone else's language to your experiences, references, memories. Only you can read like you, and we're depriving ourselves of that for the brutality of a language of ‘utility’.”

Ted Chiang’s recent viral article for The New Yorker, Why A.I. Isn’t Going to Make Art, nails it: “The task that generative A.I. has been most successful at is lowering our expectations, both of the things we read and of ourselves when we write anything for others to read. It is a fundamentally dehumanizing technology because it treats us as less than what we are: creators and apprehenders of meaning. It reduces the amount of intention in the world.”

📚 Melissa McCarthy's Photo, Phyto, Proto, Nitro

I really loved Photo, Phyto, Proto, Nitro by Melissa McCarthy. It’s hard to describe it, but the way it stitches a thread through history of photography, etymology, Greek mythology, Hiroshima, sharks and death, scratches an itch in my brain that feels so satisfying.

🤝 Self respect and authorship 

I interviewed the influential graphic designer Peter Saville at D&AD Festival at London Southbank back in May, and in our phone calls in the run-up planning out the talk, I noticed how he used the term self respect, with regards to how he works. He has well defined boundaries around the work he will and won’t do, depending on how it aligns with him – his view on what work is important, how he sees the world, and himself, I suppose. And it has cost him; he spoke openly on stage about how much better off financially he would be if had taken a different route, that not owning a home in London where he lives is part of that trade-off.

As the designer behind some of the most iconic work ever produced (my personal favorite is his record sleeve design for New Order’s Blue Monday) he has something that only creatives with a clearly defined and fiercely protected vision seem to have – a sense of authorship. His work is recognisable by characteristics that are typical of Saville: its control, its use of negative space, elegance, and modernity.

There is a connection between self respect and maintaining a sense of authorship; there’s internal reckoning with yourself and the choices you make, and how your output projects that. It’s the opposite of cognitive dissonance; some combination of Joan Dididion’s “we eventually lie down alone in that notoriously uncomfortable bed, the one we make ourselves. Whether or not we sleep in it depends, of course, on whether or not we respect ourselves,” from her famous essay On Self Respect, and Dolly Parton’s famous line, “Find out who you are and do it on purpose.” 

📝 Culture writers to admire

There’s a number of writers whose work on visual culture I admire, but to name just a few: 

Natasha Stagg’s writing on media, fashion and art in Sleeveless (2009) and Artless (2023), is not only brilliant cultural and fashion commentary but it also accurately captures just what it was like to work in the fashion and culture media covering these topics during that time. 

Critic Philippa Snow’s writing is the first thing I want to read whenever there's a new film or exhibition that crosses her niche. Her latest book Trophy Lives explores celebrity as it relates to art, and she just announced her next book on Femininity and Fame will be coming out next year.

Shuair Khan’s Substack the futures of intelligence synthesizes a vast amount of research and thinking on AI and ethics in a way that feels thoughtful, human and accessible. It was great to get to commission her for the 2024 D&AD Annual on inclusive AI.

Gem Fletcher’s work is invaluable to anyone working in or around photography; The Messy Truth podcast hosts conversations with people that continually deepen my understanding, and her recent work with WeTransfer is a vital resource for anyone navigating a career in the industry.

🤔 Thinking more critically about the images around us

I really appreciate the work Emily Keegin does via her Instagram account to interrogate the images we are served and the surrounding media narratives that influence how we consume them. 

For photo nerds like me, it’s great when she dives into an image or image series, which she did recently with the Annie Leibovitz Kamala Harris Vogue shoot, breaking down the composition and the wider tradition of the political photoshoot, and how Leibovitz absolutely cooks at documentary style photography. Keegin’s work is a masterclass in media literacy, like the way she broke down the image selection and subsequent media headlines from the attempted assassination of Trump earlier this year, invoking a similar image following Reagan’s attempted assassination in 1981. 

Or the recent photographs of Trump ‘working’ in a McDonalds, which were so outlandish people said they were AI rather than believe them: “We send photo-journalists to cover political theater. Their pictures give credence to political fictions. But now the pictures look like fiction so the fake event is finally rendered honestly.” 

Her posts have certainly sharpened my own reading of images. I would say it’s a must for anyone studying or working around photography or publishing, but actually everyone can benefit from thinking more critically about images the way Keegin teaches us to.

🔦 Shining a light on those often overlooked in media

I thought photographer Joanne Coates was a brilliant choice for the official artist of this year’s general UK election. She was appointed by the Speaker’s Advisory Committee on Works of Art, and traveled the United Kingdom photographing people in order to produce a unique work in response to the campaign.

A native of the North East of England, she explores society and class in her work from an angle of rurality, often overlooked in the media, which tends to frame those issues in an urban context. It feels important that this work has been facilitated and will have a permanent home in the UK Parliamentary Art Collection.

Follow Laura on Instagram & Linkedin and check out her website here.

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