It was 20 years ago this month that I first made the blog Lovebryan. I recently finished college and was crashing at different friends’ houses and even sleeping on the roof under the solar panels of my old co-op at UC Berkeley.
@oldmanbasel let me keep my huge Apple eMac in their room and I’d teach myself to code during the day while they were in class. After a few weeks, the blog was born. I made pages for all my friends to post about their daily lives, travels, parties, whatever. It was our DIY form of social media. I’d make new homepages every week with the updated posts. For me, it was an amazing platform to develop my photography, build confidence, get feedback and ultimately launch a career in photo. It was just as cool to see others like
@mikebelleme ,
@sandycandykim , and
@danilorparra progress from blog posts to illustrious creative careers of their own.
But for all the sweet nostalgia, it also contained plenty of navel-gazing, insensitive, sketchy, and embarrassing work. As the tech overlords forced their will upon us, we mostly migrated away from Lovebryan and to Instagram. With the exception of occasional posts by Danilo and
@allenying , it’s mostly been a relic for the last decade. So after 20 years, Lovebryan.com has officially been retired. You can probably dig up various iterations on the Wayback Machine, but I like to think everyone’s best work and creative contributions are yet to come.
Thanks to all who contributed and viewed the site over the years. Love, Bryan.
