Is Photography Over?

Yesterday I read a post with the title above on the "Still Searching" blog, moderated by Fotomuseum Winterthur in Zurich, Switzerland, as an "Online Discourse on Photography."  The main question raised was: given the inexorably changing world of photography, with everyone becoming a photographer through the rapidly advancing technology of cell phone cameras and post-production editing, is photography as we know it "over"?

Go to any event, and all you see is a crowd of people holding up their phones, capturing the event.  Posting pictures to Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram is now a way of life and has probably surpassed text as the substance most often sent into the world.  Indeed, the essay asks whether photography and seeing can now be considered the same.

And anyone can now access software to make perfect less-than-perfect pictures.  Every digital camera now offers a proprietary package of tools, and then there is Windows Photo Editor, iPhoto, Aperture, Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop.  One can get as technical as one wants and achieve eye-popping results.

Double Jack in the Pulpit, Robert Mapplethorpe

That isn't to say that everyone understands how to use these tools, though - or that technical software knowledge translates into artistry.  Just because you have the cropping tool on your computer doesn't mean you'll know where or how much to crop - that is to say, why you crop - to make it a better photograph.  (This is not to ignore the issue of having to crop in the first place; it is simply meant as a quick example of the difference between technique and art.)

The same can be said of writing.  Anyone can use alliteration to augment an image ("The snake slithered along the sand and seemed to sneer.") or shorten the length of sentences in an action scene to speed up the pace.  But writing well is so much more than well-chosen techniques to achieve effects.  You still have to stitch together scenes in the right order, formulate believable motivation, rachet up tension, pull the reader on board with the protagonist, tweak the pacing, and manipulate language to elicit emotion (and the right one, at the right time), as well as spin many other plates.  You need both craft and art to make a good story.  Craft can be taught.  Art has to come from within.  (One can develop a sense of vision, but that's a subject for another day.)

Napoli - 1960, Henri Cartier-Bresson

I learned in my first photography workshop that it's not the "seeing machine" you choose that determines the quality of your pictures.  I was shocked to find that my instructor, Joanne Dugan, didn't care what kind of camera we used for class.  She said we could even use a phone camera.  I had naîvely assumed that the "nicer" your camera, the better your pictures would be.  But it didn't take long to understand the main point of the class: that it's not the technology that is fundamental to your photographs; it's your vision, the way you see life around you.  Indeed, some of my favorite images are ones I've taken with my phone.  They're not the best technically, but I like what I captured in the scene - the mood, setting, and composition.

That's why I'm not worried that photography might be "over."  No matter how many people are using their iPhones to take pictures, most are still just taking snapshots and aren't interested in anything else.  No matter how much the price of Photoshop may drop (if it ever does), many are just going to play with it, albeit to varying degrees of sophistication.  Only certain people are going to struggle with capturing their vision of the world in a way that satisfies them.  Only the artist is going to spend the time and energy to bring an image in line with that vision, battling disappointment and frustration. 

Seven A.M., West Seventies, Cinda Berry

Everyone wants to get their pictures out for others to see, but only the artist wants something universal and not particular, to leave behind not documentation but testimony.  And what they create enriches us.

And there's certainly room for everyone here; this is not a race or a competition to see whose photographs should or will exist or be seen.  I like to say that I have been pursuing photography seriously for a little over a year - and relative to my own history, it's true.  But all it takes is one look at any photography website or the Flickr site of a photography Meetup group to be reminded that I am just another hack.  (A well-intentioned, serious hobbyist, but at this point, a hack nonetheless.)  I might fancy myself a neophyte artist - I don't even consider myself an evolving artist quite yet - but I am barely at Square One, and it doesn't take much for me to feel intimidated and overwhelmed.

But it does no harm to photography for people like me to try their best with their limited knowledge and skill to try and create memorable, unique images, whether we fancy ourselves as artists or not, because there will always be plenty of true artists who see the world differently from the rest of us and have different ways of interpreting it through

Provincetown Dusk, Mark Abe

their photographs.  They wrestle with technique and nuance and meaning in ways we have never considered.

They probably worried over this question at other times, too, like when the Polaroid camera first arrived or when the digital camera was born.  But the democratization of tools does not mean death of the art.  Can't it instead mean a potential increase in popular discussion, and isn't that good?  Photography that is passed off as art but which lacks heart will distill out.  And images that are generated by amateurs in a thoughtful, sincere effort to create art can hardly be a threat to it.  Even when produced by hacks like me.

So, is photography over?  

Not on your life.



Photo Credits: mapplethorpe.com, imgarcade.com, intaglioso.com, Mark Abe