RedLion
Come to the Faire
Aristophanes,
Your main point and refutation actually is my point. To use an analogy, the great mass of people don't care what the Oxford dictionary tells them about good image spelling and grammar. Languages evolve through the social use specific to the needs of people. Images are a language and there can be many vernacular dialects, and while the photographic arts equivalent of Latin or the proper King's English is still taught in the commercial, photo-journalistic, and fine art schools, people will continue to appropriate as desired. I'm not saying it isn't a messy process, but if language evolution could be stopped, then Spain, France, and Italy would still be speaking Latin. Are they all illiterate because they no longer speak it?
In the social domain, the greater mass of people are using imagery amongst themselves to arrange and curate their own personal world of values (THEIR aesthetic values, what is meaningful to THEM, etc..).
Facebook is riffing off this phenomenon, big time:
From the May 2012 Issue of "Atlantic Magazine," Article titled: "Is Facebook Making us Lonely" by Stephen Marche:
Your main point and refutation actually is my point. To use an analogy, the great mass of people don't care what the Oxford dictionary tells them about good image spelling and grammar. Languages evolve through the social use specific to the needs of people. Images are a language and there can be many vernacular dialects, and while the photographic arts equivalent of Latin or the proper King's English is still taught in the commercial, photo-journalistic, and fine art schools, people will continue to appropriate as desired. I'm not saying it isn't a messy process, but if language evolution could be stopped, then Spain, France, and Italy would still be speaking Latin. Are they all illiterate because they no longer speak it?
In the social domain, the greater mass of people are using imagery amongst themselves to arrange and curate their own personal world of values (THEIR aesthetic values, what is meaningful to THEM, etc..).
A portrait is not made in the camera but on either side of it. - Edward Steichen
There are always two people in every picture: the photographer and the viewer. ~Ansel Adams
There are always two people in every picture: the photographer and the viewer. ~Ansel Adams
"All photographs are self portraits."
--Minor White
Images taken singly and in isolation can be seen from many viewpoints, yes. But it's in the "body of work" that the worldview is revealed - be it copy-catting of mass culture junk, their own personal neuroses & narcissism, something which has aesthetic and meaning appeal to their own family, culture, or just to themselves. --Minor White
Facebook is riffing off this phenomenon, big time:
From the May 2012 Issue of "Atlantic Magazine," Article titled: "Is Facebook Making us Lonely" by Stephen Marche:
Self-presentation on Facebook is continuous, intensely mediated, and possessed of a phony nonchalance that eliminates even the potential for spontaneity. (“Look how casually I threw up these three photos from the party at which I took 300 photos!”) Curating the exhibition of the self has become a 24/7 occupation. Perhaps not surprisingly, then, the Australian study “Who Uses Facebook?” found a significant correlation between Facebook use and narcissism: “Facebook users have higher levels of total narcissism, exhibitionism, and leadership than Facebook nonusers,” the study’s authors wrote. “In fact, it could be argued that Facebook specifically gratifies the narcissistic individual’s need to engage in self-promoting and superficial behavior.”