“I can’t get over the feeling that pictures taken with a camera in a phone that everyone owns [iphone] have no value.” – Excerpt from APhotoEditor, Drowning in Photography
Sorry APE, forgive me for being prescriptive, but you’d better get over that feeling.
Just because “everyone’s doing it” — because there are a lot of photos out there in the world — doesn’t mean photography is headed for the shitter.
Two counter points cutting through to some clarity:
1. A similar argument “everyone’s doing it so photography is now lowbrow” was used in 1895 when Kodak developed roll film that could be loaded in daylight. The professionals argued that craft was now “completely lost to the amateurs”. Obviously that played out as an error in thinking, since nearly all the modern photographic “masters” have grown into being since this time in 1895, not before.
It’s just like your favorite band getting famous and then hating them for it, or talking shit about Nike and wearing Converse high tops – there’s no truth there. Nirvana changed music forever, regardless of how popular they became, and Nike owns Converse. The complaint about value is more about protecting the egos of hipsters, than a reflection of reality.
Now, before all photographers who have to work harder to make a living because of this (of which I am one) get mad, … we should remember #2:
2. Sure professional photographers must work harder today to differentiate their work, but that’s the case with almost every profession that invokes technology, or the fusion of technology and creativity. It gets harder to make the “same as it used to be” living over time in a crowded market. But this is not something that only photographers have to contend with. Almost ALL these such markets are getting more crowded. What marketplace stands still for its masses? None. Welcome to a nearly ubiquitous truth.
So, as I advocated in my Dasein Project, it might not be what some photographers want to hear, but let’s think of this a little differently. I prefer to make the argument that the snapshot has become perhaps the most human, the most important photography of our modern era. Professionals are still relevant for making statements and defining brands, genres, and movements, but it’s the snapshot that is today carrying the most metaphysical weight. Sure they’re everywhere, but that doesn’t make them worthless.
A great quote from a paper by Mia Fineman, photography curator at the Metropolitan Museum in NYC, comes to mind…
“We take snapshots to commemorate important events, to document our travels, to see how we look in pictures, to eternalize the commonplace, to extract some thread of continuity from the random fabric of experience. We try to impose a kind of order, but sometimes the process backfires, and the messy contingency of the world rushes back in, bringing with it a metaphoric richness that parallels that of dreams. The amateur photo-album is an anthology of errors: there are tilted horizons, amputated heads, looming shadows, blurs, lens flares, underexposures, overexposures, and inadvertant double exposures. And while not every bungled snapshot is a minor miracle, some seem to tap into a sort of free-floating visual intelligence that runs through the bedrock of the everyday like a vein of gold.”
So let’s reconsider the snooty position. Of course curators are important, whether that’s your friends Tumblr site or the MOMA, but with more cameras and more photos than ever before–and even BETTER photos–shouldn’t it be said that we’re not drowning in photography at all, that we’re perhaps getting metaphorically rich off more and more of these veins of gold?
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I totally agree, and left a comment to that effect on the APE blog. I find it really discouraging, or should I say disappointing how much envy and ‘hate and discontent’ I find on some of the photo blogs. Sure, the economy and all that is lousy and deserve a ‘bad press,’ but this constant griping about the work of other photographers is most tiresome.
Finally someone agrees and echoes my view on todays evolving photography. Because that’s what’s happening – photography is EVOLVING!
The vast amount of photography out there is contributing a knowledge. A knowledge of how hard it is to make an iconic photo. And how easy it is to just create something bearable, good or “awesome”.
That knowledge, I believe, will help transform and educate the general public what real photography is all about. They will learn to distantiate! And it will only make those true to the art and true to the hard labor of creating what is considered art stand out even more. It’s the lazy ones that will perish.
It’s the people like kurt cobain and john lennon etc that just do there own thing – they just do it
a lot of us just sit on the computer and read and worry – just do YOUR thing and some people will hate it and some people will love it, but at the end of the day does this matter…. just do what makes you happy.
Right on!!
My question is this, in the mass flood of photography deluging the world in every way, how do we improve the taste of the masses?
My thought, and what I gather from this article, is “make better photographs”. Thoughts? Opinions? Corrections?
Mark,
imo that’s a very good thought actually. if the “taste of the masses” is getting worser, isn’t that an advantage for us as photographers? Logically we should more and more stand out.
Best regards from the arctic circle
Henning
Henning, the problem that lots of photographers are experiencing is that the standard of quality that consumers expect is getting lower, therefore, clients are less willing to pay for professional services when somebody in their office could do the job “good enough”.
Chase–
Couldn’t agree wtih you more. Whether we’re viewing images from OWS posted to Flickr or snapshots from this week’s gathering of families/friends for our US holiday of Thanksgiving, due to near ubiquitous access to devices and reach of the mobile web, the metaphysical value of images has soared,
That said, because of the sheer volume of images, we simply do not have the time to see/find the great ones, and therefore curation is more valuable than ever. And curation IS taking place in the social world (eg liking an image on FB immediately increases the likelihood that the image WILL be seen and hence the value of that image) as well as in the professional image market where editors/buyers/producers tag/tweet/blog, etc the most relevant images and/or portfolios for the projects they are trying to execute.
Bringing together the tools and metadata along with market knowledge and experience are some of the elements required on the professional end to make curation a value-add differentiator. But the outcome should be the same: getting someone to stop and take notice of a truly great image that better informs how we celebrate our world.
Mark Ippolito, Co-President
American Society of Picture Professionals, West Coast Chapter