The ocean is a lonely, perilous place. It is especially so when you are aboard a leak-prone wooden vessel laden with a rich cargo of sugar, silks, and opium, like the traders sailing the Quedagh Merchant around India’s southern tip in 1698.
In 2015, Josh Sisk, a freelance photographer in Baltimore, picked up a new Fujifilm X100S digital camera for thirteen hundred dollars. He wanted to use it on vacations and road trips, when his full kit of professional cameras and lenses would be too bulky to bring along.
Publishing, even among culture industries, is notoriously sleepy as a capitalist enterprise. Many enter the field—and take spiritual compensation in lieu of higher pay, shaping employee demographics—because they love literature.