Wim Wenders: Phones Have Made Photography ‘More Dead Than Ever’

No, instead they insist that everyone's a photographer now because it is easy. :bang:

I think, in the early days of Kodak, photography was fairly easy. You bought a camera loaded with film. You exposed the film with images. Then, you returned the camera to Kodak, who made prints and gave you a freshly loaded camera. Pretty simple.

With hundreds of photo students and tourists packing cameras around these parts, who call themselves "photographers", I quit using the title outside of work. I don't want to be associated with most of them. It's worked out well. I'm rarely asked about my picture taking. But, when it happens, I just say i'm playing around with a camera... that satisfies most. I use an old Gitzo tripod a lot, and that attracts some attention; but, not being a fancy new one, once the photo kiddies see it up close, they dismiss me as some guy who can't use a digital camera or computer.
 
Meh...
Smartphone is one button photo camera. Doesn't ring the bell?
Brownie, Instamatic. Phone camera is exactly the same.
The rest is to have some balls to admit or start winning.
We often go with our family friend and kids. On trails and such. I'm taking it with film or digital Leica. He is often beating me on photography. Yes, he kills my Leica photography often. By mobile phone, not even iPhone. :)
In return I take his and family pictures, print and return. He calls me good on that.
See?
 
Anyone who makes photographs can call themselves a photographer. The perennial question, even in films days, is whether you are any good at it. As with many things, most people aren't.


I have a hammer and a pair of pliers. Ergo I am a dentist.
 
Photography isn't special anymore..
Everyone has a cell cam..and it is all done way too fast nowadays ...cheapening it..
Too many people..too many photos..
Too much info overload...photo overload..

But that said..there are reams of good photogs out there..reams..
Its just..well..as it stands now..it is pretty much worthless..photos that is..
Unless you find a way in with that..a way to make it relevant..in your life..
There are ways..
Maybe someone else will see..and appreciate..
Maybe not..
Either way..
Its all pretty much DOA..unless you find a way..
 
Sometimes I have to remind myself that the population of this planet has trebled in my lifetime ... it keeps things in perspective.
 
Yes, there were certainly fewer people walking around with an envelope of prints they just got back from Moto-Photo than there are people with cellphones today. I would wager that more images are in focus today though.

Those poor MotoPhoto workers. lol

The internet has made everything stupid crazy I think.
 
Something I just thought about after reading all the new posts after my first one is that photography today is being marketed as just a gimmick that anyone can do. And it didn't start with the smartphones either.

Anyone remember the Andre Agassi advertisements for the new Canon Rebel 35mm SLR auto-everything cameras? Just point and push the shutter button, the camera will do everything else for you! Well, except for composition and subject selection. Even loading the film was reduced to just making sure the leader was extended far enough to catch on the auto take-up spool (Yeah, I know, it was an update of the FT QL technology).

But the marketer's point was it's so easy now. And with an SLR! While this may have created a new group of people who supposed themselves photographers, it still helped some who were intimidated at the thought of having to learn so much just to take a photo. It also gave them the equipment that was a step above their P&S cameras with the ability to change lenses, and use longer or shorter focal lengths. The Canon Rebel freed them from all the guesswork involved in the act of taking a photo so they could concentrate on the creation of art.

Later on, hopefully these new creatives would then delve into what a lot of us had to learn from the start way back when with our manual cameras and lenses. That's when the manufacturers knew they had them on the hook, and they'd soon be buying more capable cameras and lenses.

So the cameras built in to smartphones today was the hook to get buy-in from the masses. Your phone was now so much more than a communication device. Besides its computer capabilities (which wasn't enough to sell the phones to everyone), by adding the camera, and making incremental improvements to the technology, the phone makers now had a viable market. And everybody had to have one!

Then along came the blossoming of social media. You had all this capability now to take photos, you needed to have somewhere to show them, and share with the world. And it could all be done straight from the phone, no more transferring to another device to be able to upload to a SocMed service. Even instantly if you wanted it to (thus the proliferation of all those crappy shots that don't get edited before they are foisted on to the masses).

All the while, everyone is just so blissfully posting pics of their pets, kids, cars, breakfast, lunch, dinner, stupid neighbors, good friends, dumb stunts, selfies, etc., etc., etc. And the new barons of the Internet are now commercializing everything you do with your smartphone. Even at times claiming that your photos are their photos to do what they please with them (remember Flickr tried to pull a fast one by selling prints of any CC designated photos on the servers without permission from, or monetary compensation to the photographer). Newsrooms across the nation have depleted their staffs of photographers, depending on all these social media outlets to glean pictures for their articles and reports. Magazines such as Sports Illustrated have done the same, and only deal with freelancers now (now everyone is a freelancer!). Complete events such as weddings are being shot on phones. No need to hire a photographer anymore, some cousin with the latest model of phone can do the job for free.

So in a way, there are aspects of photography that are passing into the beyond, and in too many places, which could give one the feeling that in general photography is on it's last leg. But as long as there are cameras in the hands of capable photographers (film, digital, phone, doesn't matter), photography will live on. It might not be in the form we are comfortable with. You may have to shuffle through a lot of chaff to get to the good stuff. But it will be there. And just like every other generation, it will be celebrated by the last and the next, and used in its many forms, archaic or modern.

PF
 
The death of photography... *again*! First it was digital, now it’s phones...!

Do writers moan that Microsoft Word killed literature, or that all non-literary writing like texts and shopping lists have drowned good writing in a sea of mediocrity? I think not!

“Photographers” may now need to work harder to be noticed. But that’s a good thing. In the bad old days when film ruled, photography was not democratic, with its twin barriers of cost and difficulty. Cost kept the number of pictures people took. Difficulty meant that most photos were simply “straight” record shots - only those with time, money and an inclination for the technology of the darkroom added their personal stamp to pictures.

The latter reason is how camera clubs, for example, gained their reputation for formulaic mediocrity and havens for men, and became a joke in the early 21st century. But today many camera clubs are different - our local one now regularly has Magnum photographers such as Martin Parr presenting talks, and three members went on to gain masters degrees in photography at university. (Aside: I’m not a member, so I have no vested interest in this club!)

So, I’m a fan of this sea of “bad” photos. Digital and phones led to the freeing of photography from an undeserved, typically male elite that thrived in the shadows of the darkroom. Today, there are vastly more female photographers then ever before, and selfies and Instagram encourage self-expression among the young.

I love Wim Wenders’ films and photographs. But he’s being a grumpy old curmudgeon...!
 
Meanwhile, many of us are too busy making our own idea of photographs to worry about what people with smartphones are doing. They sure have no impact on me or my photography.

+1.

And what lots of people overlook is how smartphone pics are often used these days: Not as photos, but as words. It is mostly a "communication tool" today. Similar to language. Instead of an email or SMS a pic is send.
People using it don't consider it as a photograph, but as a message.

Therefore I think "smartphone imagery / communication" and photography are often two different worlds. Existing parallel. Nothing wrong with that.

Photography is not dead. The total number of enthusiast photographers worldwide is higher than ever and still increasing.

The inflation of Smartphone pics even lead to a kind of "counter movement": People going back to the roots of photography, escaping from the computer and screens, discovering film and making real prints again. Especially the "digital natives" find that exciting and refreshing.
For example look at the boom in instant photography with more than 7 million (instax) cameras sold last year.
By the way, that is more than Polaroid sold in their best record times........
Does that look as if "Photography is dead"? Certainly not.......;)
 
+1.

And what lots of people overlook is how smartphone pics are often used these days: Not as photos, but as words. It is mostly a "communication tool" today. Similar to language. Instead of an email or SMS a pic is send.
People using it don't consider it as a photograph, but as a message.


I did exactly that with two shots (no words) only yesterday .
 
Being resistant to change and intolerant is not age specific, but it does perhaps affect the elderly disproportionately. You don't see too many young people crying photography is dead.

I'd say the young are more intolerant of the old people; probably because they see "new" as meaning wonderful...

Regards, David
 
This is well said and true but still misses the point. The smartphone reflects a kind of totality ( a so-called "virtual" world) that dulls the potential for human perception. It dulls the self -I posing a threat to our capacity create a "personal notebook" just as "unconfirmed" crappy smartphone videos have degraded journalism on BBC. We don't know what we are watching, it is poorly done and we can hardly know what it means - its not a record of anything. Therefore the smartphone competes with photography's capacity to document - and like all competition the base has a tendency to drive out the dear. Comment above by Keith about the wider threat the sp poses to the capacity for human decision making is also correct.

As I see it (the reminder about art vs photography), it's about the elite getting upset as it becomes easier for the riff-raff.

Smart phones are just another tool and how you use them is neither good nor evil. Because there are millions about it means there's more photo's taken and nothing more than that.

It seems wrong to me to suppress/condemn other people's photography using smartphones just because they have it easier than we did in the good old days of FP3 and so on and so forth....

And another thing, at 19 a picture of mum and dad doesn't mean so much as the same picture when the son/daughter has reached 90...

Regards, David
 
I half agree with his argument. I think he's wrong to state that photos get less attention though. Look on instagram - photos get plenty of attention, many photos get far more attention than they have any right to get.

However, more photos are lost and forgotten than in the past. When photographs cease being physical artifacts, they lose everything that entails. I can pick up an old family album, or framed print, or a box of old slides found at an estate sale and just view the photos. With digital media? The older it gets the more problems you have retrieving those images.

I suspect that, despite the sheer number of photos being taken today, historians of the future will have a lot more to study from the film era than from our current digital one. Photography is alive and living large today. But it'll be deader than we've ever known later.
 
I do believe that opportunities to make a living as a professional photographer have diminished. How many weddings are now being shot by the uncle who has 'a nice camera'? And how many news agencies simply buy photos from freelance photographers instead of employing staff photographers?
 
Lots of professions have disappeared over the last 30 years a well as large sections of the manufacturing base.
There is no reason why photography should be exempt from this change.
 
The profession of "photojournalist" has completely disappeared.
The five who founded Magnum immediatly after the end of the WWII did it just because the profession of "photojournalist" was endangered already.

Since then, how many great reknown "photojournalists" who could earn their livings decently ? Thirty ? Fourty ? Certainly not hundreds, worldwide.

This is not smartphones which killed the "photojournalist" as a profession. Even in the 1950s fool would have been the qualificative used towards any young people declaring they would become a "photojournalist" as a profession.

And in the 1930s you had to invent fictive personas to become a "famous photojournalist" and make a living with that. Of course, if you were HCB with a large family fortune behind, things were easier.
 
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