Caine Rose: Chronicle and Commentary

Still Goth After All These Years: From Death Rock to Cemetery Photography The first so-called goth record I ever listened to was Bauhaus' "Bela Lugosi's Dead." I borrowed it in a stack of records from a friend helping to turn me on to punk music in late 1984. Another one in that stack was Dead Hippie out of Los Angeles. I was fourteen years old, sitting in my bedroom with a turntable and a pile of vinyl that would change my life. I didn't know it then, of course. I just knew that "Bela Lugosi's Dead" was unlike anything I'd ever heard—nine-plus minutes of atmospheric dread that seemed to crawl out of the speakers and lurk in the corners of the room. I listened to both these records quite a bit on my turntable until they were ultimately replaced by more recognizable punk offerings like Black Flag, Circle Jerks, and Dead Kennedys. The darkness receded as the aggression took over. Punk was immediate, direct, angry. It made sense for a suburban kid l...

My Mother Is Dying My mother is dying. Not the woman that gave birth to me— she left the Earth many years ago. But the woman that made me the man I am today. The woman that never bore her own flesh to carry on her family's name. The woman that fell in love with my dad and saw me as his perfect son. My mother is dying and it seemed to come out of nowhere. She hasn't been well for quite some time, but it got real really quick. I rescued her from a place where she was wasting away, tried to revive her and surround her with all the things she loved. Maybe it was a little too late because now she is dying. But at least she is home, surrounded by the ones that love her the most. She made me the man I am today and while I am far from perfect, I am her only son. She loves me till her last breath. I plan to be by her side when that happens because she never left my side, no matter how awful I was, for my entire life. I owe her so much and there's not enough time to repay. But I can ...

  The Follower Fallacy: What Happened When I Investigated Instagram Success When 100,000 Followers Isn't Enough Gina Black built an empire on Instagram. Over 100,000 followers. A thriving small business. Years of work transformed into a genuine online presence that supported her livelihood. Then one day, without warning, without explanation, without appeal—it all disappeared. "I've been on IG since 2013 and my first account was built to over 100k @blackcrystalcoven," Gina tells me. "At some point the algorithm changed and my once thriving account and small business was left with hardly any reach. It was heartbreaking to be very honest." One hundred thousand followers. Gone. Not deleted, not banned—worse. Instagram simply stopped showing her content to the audience she'd spent years building. The account still existed. The followers were still there. But the algorithm had decided she no longer mattered. I've been photographing cemeteries for fort...

  The Beginning I've been on IG, as a lot of us call it, since 2010. Right from the start. When I got my first iPhone. My then-wife was a performer and used it to promote her work along with all the other relevant social media platforms at the time. It was just a novelty to me. I didn't even own a real camera, just a cell phone. I had been without pro gear for a few years after selling everything in 2007 while still in the military. My son convinced me that the iPhone had the best camera at the time and the integration into the iOS ecosystem was the most attractive feature. I was all in. I got the iPhone 4 and soon after an iPad 1. Not long after, I had a MacBook Air. I drank the Steve Jobs Kool-Aid in one gulp. No regrets. I quickly found that iPhone photography was a legit endeavor and had no shame in being a once-pro photographer who didn't own an actual camera and instead shot everything from a phone. It took a while before I graduated from snapshots of my dogs and c...