Where is photography going?

Deep Fried said:
The phrase, 'photography is the new painting' was often thrown around at Art Schools 15 years ago. I didn't disagree then or now. This was at a time when intermedia and video courses were becoming the new in thing.

It is the medium of the proletariat. The most accessible visual medium, the most prolific, the easiest to do poorly. The medium in which everyone who has nothing to say can say something. Just look at flickr; it's a bloated pig of self indulgent 'art'. It is truly the medium for our society today.
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Heh... I like that ... "flickr; it's a bloated pig of self indulgent art" ;D
 
Deep Fried said:
The situation as has been pointed out by many already, is that we are recording, archiving, sharing, and praising an enormous volume of crap. There are some real beautiful works hidden in the waste, but nobody culls their work it seems. Learning the delete button may well be the best advice for many of us, myself included. It is just too easy to hang onto the waste. As users of the medium, we need to burn off the chaff in order to make sense of what we have that is worthwhile. I agree with others, that there is more good work being produced than ever before, but finding it and discerning it from the poor photographs is impossible. I should also note, I am speaking of the internet. We as a species have amassed and shared such a huge quantity of visual garbage in such a short time, I just can't imagine what my grandchildren will see when they google for images on a subject. The shear quantity dilutes the value of the very good ones in there. The value of an image in every sense erodes.
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I could not agree more!
 
I don't think we have to wait for your grandchildrens time though!

Editing Like you prune roses, ie extremely hard, is the crucial thing as you say, and is something I encourage everyone I speak to to do.
 
These three sites alone present such a vast spectrum of superb photographic art that it boggles the mind to think about how much truly amazing work is out there to be seen. Thank you so much for these links; they are immensely inspirational. Much appreciated!
 
Thanks for the link to the christopherpillitz site. This is yet another site filled with amazingly good photography worth a lot of viewing time. Much appreciated.

A comment to a number of posts here about the importance of established art gallery websites . These sites can mislead the novice photography enthusiast. Their view of photography and art is quite a narrow one, in that they most often represent only a rare few established artists that can support sales to keep galleries afloat. I very much understand this business model and I appreciate that these galleries give me the opportunity to see great photography in person. However, the work shown in these galleries is a seriously small slice of the creativity being put forth my many, many unknown or underrepresented photographers.

Thankfully, the internet has provided a much broader view of things via individual artists' websites, photo book review sites, mass viewing sites, etc.. This thread is thankfully exposing some of these sites and photographers to more viewers. I vote that this thread be made a "sticky" thread as it contributes a very important facet to RFF.
 
The real problem with photography today is there's too many shooters, to few audience. It now more like self-indulgent narcissism rather than art for audience sake. It's always too much about the photographer that the entire message of photography is lost.
How may times we logged in to Flickr just to see other people's photographs and not to upload some of our own and check out on our own the 'favorites' and 'comments'?
 
The Dark said:
The real problem with photography today is there's too many shooters, to few audience. It now more like self-indulgent narcissism rather than art for audience sake. It's always too much about the photographer that the entire message of photography is lost.
How may times we logged in to Flickr just to see other people's photographs and not to upload some of our own and check out on our own the 'favorites' and 'comments'?
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sadly true.
 
d_ross said:
snip...

...Those photographers that are the heroes of most hobby photographers such as Winogrand and Adams etc etc were all photographers who took their work seriously, and I can understand anyone today with the same commitment questioning where photography is going, and it has nothing to do with analogue or digital, except that digital has allowed so many people in the pool that there's no room left to swim!
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Agree 100% that where photography is going has nothing to do with analog or digital. IT is and always will be about the image!!!!! Who cares about how you create it? Only the photographer himself but the audience doesnt in most cases. No one cared that Ansel Adams used film to capture his images, what they cared about was that he could not do it with pen and ink, charcoal or oils. No no cared that he developed an exposure/development process that would revolutionze photography for many practitioners. On the other hand photographers like Ulesman, White etc were manipulating images from day one. The same thing is happening today with the digital platform but it was done originally with film. Like others have already posted, most photos seen online today are not very good but you can't blame that on digital alone, it's the person pushing the shutter release that holds the bulk of the blame.

On the other hand I disagree with the premise that "so many people in the pool that there's no room left to swim".. Even 20 years ago there was keen competition for jobs in the photojournalism field and in fact, in any part of the photography realm. Just like 20 years ago, you are going to have to be "good" to get any paid work and not just behind the lens, but in your marketing and concepting. I certainly agree that Digital photography has made the physical process of taking pictures easier, hence there are many people trying to make a living at it.. But the heart of a photograph is what inside the frame lines; that determines good from bad. Today's world is making photography more challenging because marketing is much more important to help distance good photographers from poor ones. While the traditional print outlets for photography continue to disappear, others online, in books and other formats seem to be developing.
 
My reference to digital was not simply digital capture, it was digital technology > the internet > broadband > flikr etc allowing masses upon masses of images without any editing multiplying by the millions every day that is filling up the hypothetical pool I talked about.
Just ten years ago we still had to process the film, print the print, scan the print, upload it to a website on super slow internet. At every time consuming junction in that process we had time to think about and edit our work, or simply be bothered printing it in the first place unless we thought it was good enough. Now we are out of control because there is nothing to limit us, it is just too easy to make process and upload pictures to the internet now that people don't stop and think hard enough about what it is they put up there.

All progress is is forward movement and it's not always good. I can't see how this can be a good place for photography to be heading.



victoriapio said:
Agree 100% that where photography is going has nothing to do with analog or digital. IT is and always will be about the image!!!!! Who cares about how you create it? Only the photographer himself but the audience doesnt in most cases. No one cared that Ansel Adams used film to capture his images, what they cared about was that he could not do it with pen and ink, charcoal or oils. No no cared that he developed an exposure/development process that would revolutionze photography for many practitioners. On the other hand photographers like Ulesman, White etc were manipulating images from day one. The same thing is happening today with the digital platform but it was done originally with film. Like others have already posted, most photos seen online today are not very good but you can't blame that on digital alone, it's the person pushing the shutter release that holds the bulk of the blame.

On the other hand I disagree with the premise that "so many people in the pool that there's no room left to swim".. Even 20 years ago there was keen competition for jobs in the photojournalism field and in fact, in any part of the photography realm. Just like 20 years ago, you are going to have to be "good" to get any paid work and not just behind the lens, but in your marketing and concepting. I certainly agree that Digital photography has made the physical process of taking pictures easier, hence there are many people trying to make a living at it.. But the heart of a photograph is what inside the frame lines; that determines good from bad. Today's world is making photography more challenging because marketing is much more important to help distance good photographers from poor ones. While the traditional print outlets for photography continue to disappear, others online, in books and other formats seem to be developing.
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Well, look at the bright side of it, then: a massive technological failure through some kind of electrical storm, culture going back to the dark ages thanks to a huge natural disaster (like getting hit by an asteroid) or just via constantly changing storage formats and media, means that in 100 years, unlike paper prints, it's all going to be gone and no one will have to look at it.

One has to take the long view.

Personally, though, it doesn't bother me a bit. There's more bad work, sure, but when I go digging at Flickr, for example, I see much more good work being produced, proportionally, than I did 40+ years ago.

I think things have gotten better, lots better. Further, when I see the abundant crap that so many people who view themselves as esoteric afficianados of arcane technology do with film these days, compared with what teenagers on Flickr can do with digital, it's obvious that simplifying the technology has opened doors for people who have artistic chops and would never be able to jump through the technological hoops film imposed. That's definitely positive, in my opinion.
 
mdarnton said:
Personally, though, it doesn't bother me a bit. There's more bad work, sure, but when I go digging at Flickr, for example, I see much more good work being produced, proportionally, than I did 40+ years ago.

I think things have gotten better, lots better. Further, when I see the abundant crap that so many people who view themselves as esoteric afficianados of arcane technology do with film these days, compared with what teenagers on Flickr can do with digital, it's obvious that simplifying the technology has opened doors for people who have artistic chops and would never be able to jump through the technological hoops film imposed. That's definitely positive, in my opinion.
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It would be silly to argue against the tools digital has given us, to young people especially, but those esoteric afficianados of arcane technology still have and use the power of digital technology at their hands. The thing I see as bad for young photographers is their loosing the ability to edit! I also find it interesting in this time that students still look to the library and Winogrand etc books for inspiration!
 
d_Ross said: "All progress is is forward movement and it's not always good. I can't see how this can be a good place for photography to be heading."

I'm sure the same thing was said when large format cameras were replaced by Speed Graphics, then Leicas and contaxes, then SLRs, then Brownies, then 110s, then Polaroids, and so on. It was not that another "film" camera was invented that was the problem, it was that more and more people could take photographs. Certainly the online realm allows everyone from masters to idiots to post their work, my suggestion is to stay away from the idiots ;-)
 
Interesting thread with links to good photo sites, thank you all.
robert
PS: in my opinion today the main difficulty or a real important step in the proces of photography is editing. Editing according to a project, to an idea. Just my opinion which could be wrong.
 
victoriapio said:
d_Ross said: "All progress is is forward movement and it's not always good. I can't see how this can be a good place for photography to be heading."

I'm sure the same thing was said when large format cameras were replaced by Speed Graphics, then Leicas and contaxes, then SLRs, then Brownies, then 110s, then Polaroids, and so on. It was not that another "film" camera was invented that was the problem, it was that more and more people could take photographs. Certainly the online realm allows everyone from masters to idiots to post their work, my suggestion is to stay away from the idiots ;-)
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More people taking photographs is a good thing, it's what they do with them that matters, ask anyone who looks at portfolios in an agency or art gallery, less is more and a body of work is only as good as it's weakest image are things they will say. it has nothing to do with cameras film or sensors.
 
Ignoring a hugely significant change of medium and how it affects the approach of the photographer and their methodology is naive. The fact that the majority of it no longer uses an analog process and cost per shot has fallen to the floor has greatly affected the way modern photography is approached by both the photographer and the viewers.

Significant paradigm shift - not just another film format change.

Result: an absolute wall of noise against a definitely fading signal.
 
It's a waste of time looking back to that which is gone. Move forward. It's a visual thing anyway, not a verbal one.
My start was in painting and printing, not photography, and it's the rare artist that is even interested in any of this stuff. It's about the work. Sitting around late at night drinking wine, sipping coffee, intellectualizing all this is all well and good, but it has absolutely nothing to do w/ the image.

I find it all very boring in fact. The gear talk is boring beyond belief. But I like connecting w/ people on the technical aspect of it. Why would anyone that's interested in "the good old days" be looking at web sites anyway? Those are facsimiles. Faux images. Photographs are those things on the wall, not flickering pixels on a computer monitor.
 
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