I just watched a documentary on American street photographer Sage Sohier, whose work focused on the people of Boston in the 1970s and ’80s.

One thing she said jumped out at me:

“I’d study my contact sheets and, as soon as I identified what was working, I would look for that when I went out to photograph.”

Now, tech and marketing bros love using data to direct their work and get better results. And they often talk about it as if it’s some new trend — a digital holy grail made possible by the magic of exponential computing power.

This trend even has a name: “dataism”.

But here’s a photographer who was shooting silver halide film and doing the exact same thing with her work half a century ago, before the internet or the “digital revolution”.

So beware any claims of “new”. And beware of shiny object syndrome. There’s nothing new under the sun. Instead, study history and you’ll realise two things:

Firstly, “new” is simply shorthand for putting a fresh spin on something that has been around for decades (maybe centuries, even).

Secondly, the most powerful ideas are timeless.

(Also—bonus lesson here—don’t believe everything tech and marketing bros say on the internet. Despite their love of objective data, they can be pretty subjective with their framing when it suits them.)