“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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Hello Chase,
I wish there were more people thinking like you, at least here in Paris, France. I am a self-taught photographer and I am constantly attacked by “older” settled pros with the same argument: technique. So just because I didn’t spend thousands of bucks on a Art School should mean that my pictures ain’t worth anything (not to mention personal insults). Sure I have still plenty of things to learn but, hey, that’s what’s so great about it. Discovering new things every day. Challenging yourself constantly because you know there is always a ‘next’ level.
APE has a very ‘Black’ view. Chasejarvis has a very ‘White’. In reality this issue is 50% gray. Don’t you lot know that nothing is ever really ‘Black’ or ‘White’ Everything has it’s advantages and disadvantages. You don’t all have to take sides. I choose to sit on the fence!
The value of an image depends on the viewer, and most often their relationship with the image. The gold of always having a camera with you, is it allowing you to record history and share it with others. Being able to capture something that you have never seen or thought of before. This could be the image itself or something to fuel desire to create a better image in the future.
As we judge images based on the feelings they give us above all else. I would think even the idea of stock photography pulling these images taken of real moments that have captured real emotion and truthful content, could hold more value then images created in a staged environment. What better way to capture lifestyle images then of someone really living that lifestyle.
I would say the real rich vs poor value comes at the price of experience and human interaction. We will have a rich historical record, but we are killing the experience. Do we need a thousand crappy photos for a band 200 feet away during a dark concert? That is annoying and distracting and I’m sure the photos hold nothing I can relate to. But when we stop helping people so we can take photos of their suffering … that is when an image truly has no value.
Snapshots are plainly boring. If something is commonplace, it looses the value by default. Any efforts to defend the contrary position are futile – when supply is greater than demand, the value has to drop or be non-existent. If anyone is capable of producing equally boring snapshot what is the point of assigning any value to it? We’ve seen it all, move on.
Hi Chase and blog readers,
The problem today in that for something to be classed as having any value is has to be seen to have a monetary value attached to it, not a sentimental or personal value. Sure there are millions of images being produced every minute of every day that doesn’t mean to say that to the owner/make they have no value or potential value.
A large advertising company here in Germany (who name slips my memory) put and add in the local papers several years ago asking Joe Public to send in his or hers snap shots of there lives for a new campaign, for each image used for the campaign the owners were invited to the launch of the campaign at a very nice hotel were they each received a small payment, the campaign ran for a full year and some around a million images were used I believe.
WHO SAID SNAP SHOTS HAVE NO VALUE!
It’s just anecdotal story. One company doesn’t make snapshots valuable. Also, there is a reason it was “several years ago”. Snapshots were more private back then.
Imagine this little metaphor – if you were an ornithologist, would you be interested in watching pigeons? I guess not. You’d be interested in something more unique, beautiful and unusual.
Snapshots are just too easy, and if something is easy to do by anyone, it’s as valuable as the brown stuff that comes out of everyone’s digestive system.