When photography was important

[goamules]

I was researching some Pictorialist photo art sales, and found this magazine from 1995. It doesn't feel like that long ago when film photography was so important. Take a look at the ads on the first few pages. Quality 35mm cameras, high end lenses, Medium Format Cameras, celebrities holding cameras in ads....it's all there, like we remembered. What happened? When did people stop thinking, contemplating art, going slow? I guess the answer is somewhere there in their smart phones and tablets, where everyone has their downturned heads when I go out in public. Strange. Do people even collect art photographs anymore? Or just snag a digital copy for free?

https://books.google.com/books?id=KS...page&q&f=false

[Richard Wasserman]

I don't think the situation is, may I say, quite as black and white as you're portraying it. Yes, the mass market and commercial photography worlds are digital, as they should be in my estimation, as they are superior tools for the task. The art photography world still has a large film presence and prints do sell—sometimes for a very large sums.

"Life is change, how it differs from the rocks" Jefferson Airplane, 1968

A musical interlude— https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOrb0G0tw08

[LabRat]

Photography used to be a "professional practice" during the last of the "golden age" of film during the 80's/90's, meaning it required some or much more skill to produce technically perfect photographs... Some had to hire a photographer to do important stuff... It got a little easier for amateurs with auto load/threading cameras, auto exposure, auto focus, etc, for shooting, then the film went off to the minilab, and they got what they got...

Now, someone can go to a big box store, and buy a new digital camera, pull it out of a box, install battery/chip, turn it on, use factory default settings, aim it at something, PHD, and get a technically passible picture (what you see is what you got)... Or just use their phone... No waiting, and no lab surprises (or costs)...

I understand that Leica mechanical film cameras (with 100's of parts inside) were a loss leader for the company, and they recovered their profits by selling/pushing accessories... I had to take apart my digi point & shoot when the internal lens cover got stuck, and the entire lens barrel had to be removed internally to access (and give a little tweak) to the capping blades... Which turned out to be quite easy to remove the rear screen, CCD, several helicoid barrels, and I marveled how much easier it must be for the maker to put one of these together, instead of ANY metal 35mm...

And different generations think about things differently than before... Shorter attention span, more immediate gratification, hype someone bought into, etc... And living in the big NOW... Everything moves faster now, and harder to see the big picture... (Not that hype or any of the above didn't exist then... It just morphed...)

And looking at other sites, it seems that the old photo mentality is becoming a lost art... (The king is dead, long live the king...)

Steve K

[invisibleflash]

I was researching some Pictorialist photo art sales, and found this magazine from 1995. It doesn't feel like that long ago when film photography was so important. Take a look at the ads on the first few pages. Quality 35mm cameras, high end lenses, Medium Format Cameras, celebrities holding cameras in ads....it's all there, like we remembered. What happened? When did people stop thinking, contemplating art, going slow? I guess the answer is somewhere there in their smart phones and tablets, where everyone has their downturned heads when I go out in public. Strange. Do people even collect art photographs anymore? Or just snag a digital copy for free?

https://books.google.com/books?id=KS...page&q&f=false

I would collect photos for $20 to $30 a pop. But I can't find much I like in that $ area. So I used to print out 8 x 10 inch internet copies and put them in a post bound book . I have given up on that practice a few years ago since I have no room for it. Now I just save digital files to look at every once in a awhile. Generally speaking they are not anything I'd pay for.

When they came out with the idea of 'fair use' it opened up a lot of wiggle room for sharing things.

No time to go slow anymore, unless your into LF. With 2 billion cell cams out there the photo market is overloaded. We got to produce, produce a lot and produce extreme to get any attention...and in my case I also try to produce outstanding images within their genre.

nsfw

https://danielteolijr.wordpress.com/...e-too-extreme/

You LF guys are extreme as well. You want extreme sharpness and ultimate IQ. So we are all after extreme in one way or another.

[Richard Wasserman]

This seems relevant— http://lenscratch.com/

[Jim Jones]

Not all is lost. 30 years ago when I began exhibiting at the annual local arts and crafts show, I was usually the only photographer. Now there are several. More photographers are active at school sports events, which is good. The kids get better coverage of their efforts that way. There may be more fine photography produced than ever, but casually conceived and finished photographs overwhelm them. It's that way in other arts, too.

[Tin Can]

This seems relevant— http://lenscratch.com/

Great link and and stories. I started way too late, but just like Sid Kaplan my whole home is a darkroom and I sleep in a corner. Perfectly happy for darkness, solitude, time to think, concentrate on film and wet prints.

[jp]

The magazines are just consumerism in retrospect. A mix of nice and wannabe-nice cameras. Printed magazines and ads are a thing of the past mostly except for some niches. I enjoy a car magazine for bathroom reading material.

Digital is great for color. It used to be if I wanted accurate color, I'd shoot slide because the lab couldn't mess it up. But I'd have poor dynamic range a tough time printing or finding a quality lab to print from slides. Cibachromes were nice, but it was kind of a big deal. Now I can shoot negative film, get great dynamic range, scan them, and get prints exactly like I want with better archival qualities than most wet printing color prints. We reminisce about the good things from the past but not the bad things.

Use the technology and social media to promote your physical prints like previous media never could.

[TXFZ1]

In the link it mentioned the Bert Stern's "Last Sitting" photos were listed on QVC for $280. Today these photos are "Price on request" at Artnet. By going by price alone, there has been an increase in the worth of the photos. Seems the market price would decrease in value if everyone could just snag on for free.

David

[goamules]

I guess my nostalgia kicked in. Perhaps it is mostly magazines that are gone, not photography. Oh....but film photography....almost gone.