A rant.
That photography has become less of a craft in recent years, and in the shadow of technological advances is not, I don't think, really happening.
I don't think it has become less of a craft. Or at least, I think that there are as many or more crafty photographers now as there have ever been. There is a much larger market for cameras, a much more extensive set of niches, a larger variety of cameras and breeds of photography. There are multiple technologies in action. There is a much larger pool of images floating around the world now that technology has made it so reasonable for the multitude to produce them. That diminishes the value of each image, maybe, and demands a bit more of a work to really capture of the attention of the viewer. And the critic. People who criticize the new direction in the craft are really probably looking more for something unique than something low-tech. And applying filters and warps in photoshop doesn’t count.
The advent of digital and before that, fully automatic technologies, has had only the effect of making what was once a very difficult, time consuming art or craft into a mainstream hobby. It has made professional photography more efficient, more accurate, more effective. Surely Ansel Adams would have loved to have had a very fast AF medium format camera or a Linhof Technorama 617. How many times had he missed the perfect moment, when all the lighting and colors, the birds and clouds and wind were all perfect? Many times. He would have been a great user of large format digital cameras and photoshop too.
It has also - and this is where the illusion of loss occurs - simplified the process - made it accessible to the masses. It hasn't simplified the entire variety of tools, but has created a massive breed of simple cameras and their relative software and accessories that appeal to the larger portion of the market – those who aren’t into photography in the classic sense.
The flood of snapshot culture into the “photography” hobby is another factor. I don’t, for one, believe that one can call snapshots “photography”. They are record, like video or audio recordings. Made to remember instead of to present something visually that doesn’t come across entirely through its subject matter. Form, composition, lighting, texture. . . all these are the makings of photographs and you won’t see or hear or read of any attention to those aspects in the snapshot digicam crowd. But they still call it photography. HP and Canon and Nikon and Olympus still call it that. Because it doesn’t have a name yet. It is a derivative of photography – a practical use of the mass market camera and process.
HCB’s style actually very closely resembles the snapshot style we have today. His specialty was the moment – the decisive moment – and all of the modern technology that has come along in the last 30 years is actually very much in the spirit of that. AF, auto metering, motor drives, the entire digital thing. All very HCB in the most basic sense. So where is the key difference between my sister’s snapshots and HCB’s own? I honestly can’t say. Would anyone say that his work was any more crafty than the same thing done with a Canon Powershot digicam and touched up in PS? Is the speed of the process really that relevant? I think so, but that is really a personal thing and I don’t think it has any actual validity.
People are looking at the photography trade/hobby/craft/art from too far back, and taking in the enormous size of the digital/AFSLR market along with the slow, deliberate, nex-gen Ansel Adams and HCB types - and saying, "wow, where is our craft going?" They aren’t respecting the DSLR user with the enormous zoom lens and 4GB memory cards, powerdrive, VR, etc. Those guys and gals are just “getting something to do the work for them”. Maybe they are. If they’re pros, they are and it makes sense. But maybe they are looking at all the same aspects of the image that our most highly esteemed old timers did. Maybe they have as much of an eye for composition as Ansel Adams and as much of an appreciation for the moment as HCB, but they also appreciate the assurance that comes with the LCD viewing screen and full auto when necessary. They don’t like working with chemicals or loading film. In the end, they are producing wonderful work with equal levels of care and craft as anything traditional but it gets thrown into the “digital” pile with the billions of other digimages by some film purists. And disregarded as art.
Of course, the craft is still there, it's just been made smaller in comparison to the new mass market. There may even be a greater number of photographic artists - the sort whose existence would please the old timers - but in comparison to the digital millions, that population is rapidly shrinking.
When there is just so much of something, it becomes less valuable or unique on an individual basis. Look at music now. Compare a modern composer to Mozart. Back in the day, the whole thing was more difficult, time consuming, there were only a handful of great artists in the world because very few people had access to the tools. Now, the little kid down the street who would never have been able to afford a grand piano and a string accompaniment has a synthesizer, electronic drums, and garage band software on his computer. Now there are millions of artists. There are old timers who look at electronica or rock and disrespect it. It’s not “music”, they say.
