Future of Photography...

[RedLion]

Took another look at Nick Turpin's essay on Photography from back in Nov 2011, titled Photography on the Couch, on the proliferation and detonation of photography as a mass movement or mass effect.

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A quote from the essay: " I think Photography is going to be fine but I’m not so sure we need photographers anymore or anyone to tell us what’s worth looking at."

Facebook spends a billion dollars to buy Instagram and yet as the internet gets flooded with yet more billions of photos we have a "precession of simulacra."

The simulacra that Baudrillard refers to are the significations and symbolism of culture and media that construct perceived reality, the acquired understanding by which our lives and shared existence is rendered legible; Baudrillard believed that society has become so saturated with these simulacra and our lives so saturated with the constructs of society that all meaning was being rendered meaningless by being infinitely mutable. Baudrillard called this phenomenon the "precession of simulacra". (Wikipedia)
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We've become so saturated with images that the art has moved from a first order simulation to in many cases a third order simulation - without being noticed. In other words, there's no longer the expectation that photography needs to reflect reality. Instead, photography is also used to construct it.

Here's a clue where this might be heading:

Facebook has already understood that we are moving to visual communication and away from written or verbal communication. The newly-enforced Facebook Timeline privileges visual imagery over text. With Facebook Timelines, we now tell our stories in pictures, not in words. (from culturalweekly.com)​

We are becoming less literate and more visual and so photography is becoming the new universal language of communication for the global masses. Expression not by typing words to each other any more, but by image capture and modification. That's why photos no longer need to be representational of some exterior commonly agreed upon reality. It's the same reason why the first alphabets were ideograms (made in the shape of those ideas or things they were meant to represent), but that over time they no longer needed to be.

But even if photography has become an abstract language equally adept at communicating inner states as well as outer realities, it still has to follow some kind of grammar. What that grammar is, I have no idea.

Joe

 

[Jamie123]

I think the idea that there's no more expectation of indexicality in photography has become commonplace by now. That's not really new. What is more interesting is the second point you're referring to, i.e. that we are in fact turning to communication through imagery and away from verbal communication. And it's not a mistery to me why this is happening. Young kids today have an incredible visual literacy while their actual literacy is slowly degrading.

I'm not that pessimistic about the future of photography, though. If there is something good about Instagram it's that it is ruthlessly exposing the vacuity of the persistence on the image surface. It has shown that this nostalgic mode of simulated image degradation that has been hailed as the hallmark of authenticity by the lomo crowd is nothing more than a cheap gimmick.

 

[steveniphoto]

photography is one of the newest "true art forms" in my opinion. it will follow the same trends as music, reading, dance, painting, etc meaning they could only be done by certain people (example: serfs were uneducated, music could only be heard live, painting before photography, dancers in certain cultures for religion).

i think that if photography follows this trend, then the quote from the essay will become reality.

"I think Photography is going to be fine but I’m not so sure we need photographers anymore or anyone to tell us what’s worth looking at."

as far as the visual literacy part.. well a picture is worth a thousand words and i seriously mean that.

 

[Jamie123]

I suppose 99% of all the photos worldwide are family/vacation snaps. Don't they reflect reality?

I think not. Isn't the function of Instagram and all the other retro filters to simulate exactly that kind of photography, i.e. the nostalgic vacation/family snapshot? These kinds of photos used to be considered authentic because all their technical deficiencies pointed to the fact that the person taking the picture didn't have the technical skill to manipulate or even control the outcome. Now this has become nothing more than a performance. You can choose between the perfectly exposed image or a heavily degraded one depending on which mode of authenticity you want to perform.

 

[Jamie123]

But they don't alter the content, only the look, so the reality is still there.

Isn't content rendered completely irrelevant by the emphasis on the look that is so prevalent in photography these days? The photograph is no longer considered to be a sort of 'window' to the content. The photograph itself, the surface, is the content. It communicates through what it looks like, not what it is of.

 

[heartattackandvine]

I suppose 99% of all the photos worldwide are family/vacation snaps. Don't they reflect reality?

Don't know about the reality part, but surely the family/vacation snaps existed for at least a century (and a bit longer) and were never really deemed domain of the art of photography (AoP). The explosion illustrated in the OP I do not believe deals with the AoP at all.

Once I told a factoid I had found in some book to my scientist friend. It goes something like this (my memory is very approximate, please don't take the numbers literally): "at the time of Ben Franklin, all people with doctoral degrees in the US filled one large room. Today there is half a million of them." My scientist friend (who is leading a team at the Cavendish Lab at Cambridge UK, btw) to this replied: "But those who are really good would still fit into one room."

 

[BobYIL]

Alphabets in all forms and configurations were available since milleniums, for survival they needed some modifications.

Visual communications elements were available since milleniums, most of them reached to our day through lots of modifications.

No matter what we mean by “ a picture is worth a thousand words”, we sometimes need words for what we could not express, maybe with thousand pictures.

 

[Jamie123]

Don't know about the reality part, but surely the family/vacation snaps existed for at least a century (and a bit longer) and were never really deemed domain of the art of photography (AoP). The explosion illustrated in the OP I do not believe deals with the AoP at all.

Once I told a factoid I had found in some book to my scientist friend. It goes something like this (my memory is very approximate, please don't take the numbers literally): "at the time of Ben Franklin, all people with doctoral degrees in the US filled one large room. Today there is half a million of them." My scientist friend (who is leading a team at the Cavendish Lab at Cambridge UK, btw) to this replied: "But those who are really good would still fit into one room."

There's no essential distinction between art photography and vernacular photography. If the medium and the way we relate to it changes this affects all areas of photography.

 

[heartattackandvine]

If the medium and the way we relate to it changes this affects all areas of photography.

Sure. But the coming disappearance of photographers and those with a higher order knowledge, skills and contribution in this area has been blown out of proportion in the OP.

That sentiment reminds me a bit of this recent tongue in cheek article from Wired. ("10 Photographers You Should Ignore").

 

[shadowfox]

Sorry, but this is just a bunch of intellectual navel-gazing.

Yes, there are billions of photos out there.
But those don't impact me personally.
I personally still have to choose and *find* photos that impress and move me; meaning they are *not* everywhere.

Keep taking pictures, it still takes a lot of effort to produce a good one.
Instagram is just a trend, not a cop-out.

 

[Aristophanes]

I think not. Isn't the function of Instagram and all the other retro filters to simulate exactly that kind of photography, i.e. the nostalgic vacation/family snapshot? These kinds of photos used to be considered authentic because all their technical deficiencies pointed to the fact that the person taking the picture didn't have the technical skill to manipulate or even control the outcome. Now this has become nothing more than a performance. You can choose between the perfectly exposed image or a heavily degraded one depending on which mode of authenticity you want to perform.

Ever use a Brownie as your first (and only) family camera?

Cheap lens, vignetting, all sorts of technical deficiencies.

And a whole lot of really lousy shots as well. Missed opportunities. Closed eyes of grandma at her 90th birthday. And so on.

All that "authenticity" came at a price of wasted shots, opportunity, emotional moments, and financial cost paying for development and prints that were disappointing.

I'll take the "performance" of having the shot made with a perfect, well-timed exposure perhaps subjected to a modest artistic interpretation through an algorithm to "mix it up" aesthetically and whimsically over the completely lost opportunities of the past.

Sure, computing power has elevated the skills art making a photographic opportunity more accessible to more people. Excellent. It democratizes quality and opportunity of the medium and is progress.

The OP's references almost pine for a mystic, elite priesthood who can decipher for us this supposedly new world where words mean less than photos and the photos become reality.

Or, to quote Douglas Coupland: "Nostalgia is a weapon."

Images have always been used to construct reality, including photographs. BBC did a fantastic series on that premise yard ago called the "Power of Art" and their series "The Genius of Photography" also made that point.

 

[Jamie123]

Ever use a Brownie as your first (and only) family camera?

Cheap lens, vignetting, all sorts of technical deficiencies.

And a whole lot of really lousy shots as well. Missed opportunities. Closed eyes of grandma at her 90th birthday. And so on.

All that "authenticity" came at a price of wasted shots, opportunity, emotional moments, and financial cost paying for development and prints that were disappointing.

I'll take the "performance" of having the shot made with a perfect, well-timed exposure perhaps subjected to a modest artistic interpretation through an algorithm to "mix it up" aesthetically and whimsically over the completely lost opportunities of the past.

Sure, computing power has elevated the skills art making a photographic opportunity more accessible to more people. Excellent. It democratizes quality and opportunity of the medium and is progress.

The OP's references almost pine for a mystic, elite priesthood who can decipher for us this supposedly new world where words mean less than photos and the photos become reality.

Or, to quote Douglas Coupland: "Nostalgia is a weapon."

Images have always been used to construct reality, including photographs. BBC did a fantastic series on that premise yard ago called the "Power of Art" and their series "The Genius of Photography" also made that point.

Oh boy, where to start.

My point wasn't at all that old cameras made pictures more authentic. My point was that we assign authenticity to them in hindsight because their technical deficiencies suggest that the person taking the photograph wasn't proficient enough to manipulate the outcome. Of course, by no means I'm suggesting that they actually are authentic in any significant way. Actually, the people taking those pictures didn't think they were producing anything authentic. In fact, the technical deficiencies were an undesired byproduct of using inadequate equipment.
But now it's no byproduct anymore. Now the image content is a byproduct. It is only a carrier for the performance of a photographic mode of nostalgia.

I think you understood both the OP's and my comments as a praise of the 'good old times' but (at least for me) that's not at all what it's about. I think the point is simply that photography and especially our relation to it is changing. Doesn't really matter if it changes for the better or worse. It might be worse for some and better for others.

 

[Aristophanes]

Oh boy, where to start.

My point wasn't at all that old cameras made pictures more authentic. My point was that we assign authenticity to them in hindsight because their technical deficiencies suggest that the person taking the photograph wasn't proficient enough to manipulate the outcome. Of course, by no means I'm suggesting that they actually are authentic in any significant way. Actually, the people taking those pictures didn't think they were producing anything authentic. In fact, the technical deficiencies were an undesired byproduct of using inadequate equipment.
But now it's no byproduct anymore. Now the image content is a byproduct. It is only a carrier for the performance of a photographic mode of nostalgia.

I think you understood both the OP's and my comments as a praise of the 'good old times' but (at least for me) that's not at all what it's about. I think the point is simply that photography and especially our relation to it is changing. Doesn't really matter if it changes for the better or worse. It might be worse for some and better for others.

I think you are reading waaaay too much into the effects of filters in iPhone apps!

Soft focus lenses were all the rage in the late 70's and 80' as sharper colour film made people look "too realistic". Who wants to see residual acne scars?

The tension in photography between authenticity and 'real' reality has always existed. A photo's authenticity was not defined because of a lack of manipulation techniques; it was assigned because I took that photo of grandma! It's just one piece of the memory mosaic. By all means the people taking those photos DID think they were doing something authentic. That's the whole point of posing for a "family photo": to authenticate a shared family moment and immortalize it in capture.

I see try little change in what photography means today versus even the recent past. I see—like a lot of information nowadays—an overload of hard-to-filter chatter (an equivalent charge made when paperback novels came out), but very little fundamentally has changed except a pontificating elite has been subject through technology and economics to the barbarians at the gates catching up and surpassing the self-appointed gatekeepers.

I also refuse to give Facebook that much credit for social change.

 

[Jamie123]

I think you are reading waaaay too much into the effects of filters in iPhone apps!

Soft focus lenses were all the rage in the late 70's and 80' as sharper colour film made people look "too realistic". Who wants to see residual acne scars?

The tension in photography between authenticity and 'real' reality has always existed. A photo's authenticity was not defined because of a lack of manipulation techniques; it was assigned because I took that photo of grandma! It's just one piece of the memory mosaic. By all means the people taking those photos DID think they were doing something authentic. That's the whole point of posing for a "family photo": to authenticate a shared family moment and immortalize it in capture.

I see try little change in what photography means today versus even the recent past. I see—like a lot of information nowadays—an overload of hard-to-filter chatter (an equivalent charge made when paperback novels came out), but very little fundamentally has changed except a pontificating elite has been subject through technology and economics to the barbarians at the gates catching up and surpassing the self-appointed gatekeepers.

I also refuse to give Facebook that much credit for social change.

Of course they thought they were producing real pictures but they didn't choose the technical deficiencies as a signifier for authenticity. Or to make an example, they didn't think to themselves "I'm gonna make this shot really grainy and underexposed and use this cheap lens so that it looks authentic."

It's not really about one iPhone app or filter. But if you see little change today in what photography means as opposed to the past and if you refuse to give Facebook and other social networks credit for social change then I guess you just like to close your eyes to what's happening in the world.

 

[Lauffray]

I think you are reading waaaay too much into the effects of filters in iPhone apps!

I also refuse to give Facebook that much credit for social change.

I'm with you, I refuse to over-analyze these trends, they're overvalued anyway

 

[Aristophanes]

Of course they thought they were producing real pictures but they didn't choose the technical deficiencies as a signifier for authenticity. Or to make an example, they didn't think to themselves "I'm gonna make this shot really grainy and underexposed and use this cheap lens so that it looks authentic."

It's not really about one iPhone app or filter. But if you see little change today in what photography means as opposed to the past and if you refuse to give Facebook and other social networks credit for social change then I guess you just like to close your eyes to what's happening in the world.

"..signifier for authenticity"!?

I think Foucault tripped you and Derrida stole your camera while Umberto Eco is writing a short story about what he thinks he saw.

Yes, we really DID think to ourselves "This Instamatic is not very good, but it's all I've got. Why didn't Dad get me that Pentax MX like I saw in the magazine? I hate my parents."

Those were pretty authentic thoughts.

I see little change because I have changed. The same impulses drive the market and the user experience. We share more crap because we can, it's different crap. I do see a lot more amateurs making a lot more fantastic photos. That doesn't change, however, that we have more time to view them. Funny that.

 

[RedLion]

Two Points.

Two Points.

Hi All,

Good discussion!

Just wanted to clarify the two main points I was trying to make.

1. People are using photography to create and fine-tune their reality. How does this occur? Through the selection of what to photograph, the editing/selection of taken images, and in the post-processing, people are presenting a model (their model) of reality - what is true, good, beautiful, interesting, bad, ugly, etc.. to them and often as something to share with others via physical photographs or social media.

2. As an evolving language, photography is moving away from an esoteric alphabet which is presided over by gilds and scribes and is moving towards a universal vernacular where everybody is literate. You'll still have the professional pictorial equivalents of the novelists, copywriters, historians, chroniclers, and grammar teachers, but the shift will be overwhelmingly towards the individual use of this new vernacular to arrange their own thinking via image making and to communicate with others.

IMO, both of these are a good thing. The future's so bright we'll all have to wear shades (or 3 stop Neutral Density Filters).

Joe

 

[Teuthida]

Isn't content rendered completely irrelevant by the emphasis on the look that is so prevalent in photography these days? The photograph is no longer considered to be a sort of 'window' to the content. The photograph itself, the surface, is the content. It communicates through what it looks like, not what it is of.

No. Photography is not abstract expressionist painting. Its precise charm for the instagram generation is that it is reality, but reality manipulated by them to show how [fill the blank with the appropriate hip descriptor] they really are.

 

[stillshunter]

Great discussion and a riveting read.

There's no denying that the sheer amount of available images has risen exponentially. Following one thesis of this thread, if this substitutes for the verbal/oral/written, and means people are saying 'more'....then I am afraid we will all go deaf for the noise! With all communication there is an inherent signal to noise ratio, and I remain convinced that we do still need photographers to show us something a little more 'pure', more of a story, more signal. I suppose it's like asking people if we still need authors in the face of the amount of words out there. Yeah more people talk and write but less people have something to say. Just like there are more monochrome images of the homeless, close-ups of bees and flowers, cool coloured lomo 'selfies', but none is novel. None are starting a new dialogue. I mean how many ways can you say, "Man aren't I cool" or "Aren't I valid?" or "I was here".....

I think the world still needs real story-tellers. Yeah a yarn at a barbeque is a nice distraction but you'll not get lost in it nor look at the world a little different afterwards.

Great reference heartattackandvine (#11 above) - an excerpt from that tongue in cheek article from Wired. ("10 Photographers You Should Ignore")

"Eggleston is a pioneer of color photography, and a legend. For the last forty years he’s been “at war with the obvious,” working in a “democratic forest” where everything visible is equally viable as subject matter. Trees, dirt, signs, houses, carpet, red ceilings, naked men, old men with guns, tricycles, etc. Working in this manner, he inspired many photographers to look no further than their immediate surroundings for inspiration. Then came digital cameras, and then the internet, and then Flickr. Eggleston may have won the war with the obvious, but now the obvious is getting its revenge in the form of the millions of banal, boring, dull photographs that are being uploaded to the web everyday. We don’t need to go far to find the ‘democratic forest,’ in fact, we may never be able to escape it."

-- Bryan Formhals

 

[Aristophanes]

Hi All,

Good discussion!

Just wanted to clarify the two main points I was trying to make.

1. People are using photography to create and fine-tune their reality. How does this occur? Through the selection of what to photograph, the editing/selection of taken images, and in the post-processing, people are presenting a model (their model) of reality - what is true, good, beautiful, interesting, bad, ugly, etc.. to them and often as something to share with others via physical photographs or social media.

2. As an evolving language, photography is moving away from an esoteric alphabet which is presided over by gilds and scribes and is moving towards a universal vernacular where everybody is literate. You'll still have the professional pictorial equivalents of the novelists, copywriters, historians, chroniclers, and grammar teachers, but the shift will be overwhelmingly towards the individual use of this new vernacular to arrange their own thinking via image making and to communicate with others.

IMO, both of these are a good thing. The future's so bright we'll all have to wear shades (or 3 stop Neutral Density Filters).

Joe

I'll disagree with both.

1. "...to create and fine-tune reality" is over-generalizing. Problematic keyword: reality. Define.

How about augment memory and create a figurative archive to reflect upon? Is it just helping a family memory for grandma as she slips away, or is it a historical record, or is it a photo for an insurance claim, or is it art that moves so many to tears, or is it politics that angers a crowd?

One doesn't need a technically inferior camera and film to remind us that our images are representations. Digital is not so pure we have been embarking on a mass delusion whereby its collusion with the all-powerful Facebook is now defining our very existence, so much so that Instagram and those nefarious algorithms are a form of subversive, counter-rebellion.

2. I disagree that everyone is literate or becoming more versed in photography as a medium. I think we are simply approaching 9 billion people, with more reaching middle class wealth, and those people nearly universally have low threshold means to share their productivity (Flickr, RFF Gallery).

We're just picking up larger data set. It may be slightly more proportional to the past as more people have leisure time and photography is a top-10 hobby, but it's still a rare topic in K-12 art class.

Photoshop has created its own caste system with Scott Kelby the self-appointed Grande Poobah.

An argument can be made that the home darkroom (a huge suburban phenomenon of the 1970's and 80's) has given way to a dumbing down of techniques all the way through to finished product, much like a spellchecker has tame copy editing. It's largely done in-camera.

But (main augment and refutation) most people, even though there may be more accessible photography, still have not devoted more time to understanding it as something beyond the vernacular. They may have a slightly better understanding of it as an art form, but more about how it can be worked into a gallery wall like the one in Better Homes & Gardens. Or as a gossip point in a text message.

This burgeoning middle class is, IMO, only marginally better versed in photography than previous generations. And as a caveat, back in the 1950's-70's, some photographers were household names, like Capa. Not now. So touchstone, higher order, esoteric understanding is really not any deeper now than it was if we all jumped into a wayback machine. It taks huge efforts of time to become esoteric at anything. I'm not seeing that allocation.

So, I think the future of photography will look a lot like the past, but with more Photoshop because we still do not like acne scars.

I do agree that people will arrange things more individualistically, but that's a trend in almost everything from personal finance to home ownership, and this cocooning of social experience is a Faith Popcorn decades old trend that is (was) surprisingly accurate and enduring. I blame video games.

Again, IMO.