When photography was important

[Alan Gales]

Man, Graham Nash looks so young. I saw him on tv a few months ago and he's an old man!

I saw him a couple times with David Crosby and Stephen Stills. Great music! Not just photography has changed.

[Maris Rusis]

Photography was important only when it was the most facile way of making general purpose pictures.

Actually the majority of people never wanted photographs. They never wanted drawings or paintings either. Etchings, engravings, lithographs, aquatints, woodcuts, and so on were generally tolerated only until a quicker, cheaper, easier way of making pictures came along. These days the monitor display of an electronic image file delivers what most folks really want: pictures to look at and pictures to show to others all with no waiting, no cost, no waste, no skills required, and no serious consequences for success or failure.

The older media, photography included, remain alive because of their singular chain of values:
Step 1. How the subject matter relates to the picture-maker.
Step 2. How the picture-maker engages with the medium.
Step 3. How the final picture engages with a viewer sophisticated enough to be aware of steps 1 and 2.

Ultimately (distant future, near future?) monitor images may be superceded when pictures can be beamed direct to the brain; no eyes needed!

[Tin Can]

Photography was important only when it was the most facile way of making general purpose pictures.

Actually the majority of people never wanted photographs. They never wanted drawings or paintings either. Etchings, engravings, lithographs, aquatints, woodcuts, and so on were generally tolerated only until a quicker, cheaper, easier way of making pictures came along. These days the monitor display of an electronic image file delivers what most folks really want: pictures to look at and pictures to show to others all with no waiting, no cost, no waste, no skills required, and no serious consequences for success or failure.

The older media, photography included, remain alive because of their singular chain of values:
Step 1. How the subject matter relates to the picture-maker.
Step 2. How the picture-maker engages with the medium.
Step 3. How the final picture engages with a viewer sophisticated enough to be aware of steps 1 and 2.

Ultimately (distant future, near future?) monitor images may be superceded when pictures can be beamed direct to the brain; no eyes needed!

Maris, I have said your last comment more than once on this forum. It will happen and soon.

[Two23]

Photography was important only when it was the most facile way of making general purpose pictures.

I've often thought this too. In the mid 1990s I returned to college for a master's degree, and worked at an "industrial" Fuji film processing plant. Every night we'd open envelopes that came from Walmarts, drug store chains, and grocery chains in towns scattered across several states. Some nights there'd be over 10,000 rolls of 35mm film. On my breaks and other slow times I'd watch endless streams of prints flow out of a printer that was the size of a small Winnebago. About 90% of the photos were of people, their pets, their new car. Another 8% were of snow piled up on their patios, a rainbow, or their vacation photos. It wasn't uncommon to have photos from Christmas and a high school graduation on the same roll. About 2% of the photos were from someone obviously interested in photography at one level or another. Most all of these people only owned a camera so they could take photos of this sort of thing. They have all migrated to cell phones now. Sure, few "serious" photographers dropped their film off at Walmart, but OTOH I go the feeling that there were relatively few "serious photographers." The percentage might be even less now that most of the people I see appear to be addicted to messing around on their phones when they aren't actively engaged in something else. I often wonder how many of these cellphone people have lost their ability to "see."


Kent in SD

[Gary Tarbert]

I see so many people out shooting with cellphones ,That i think only serious shooters shoot with cameras , So if they want a big print for their wall they still need a shot from a real camera , digital or otherwise , So all is not lost , Just a thought

[ic-racer]

Nothing new.

... cultural changes ... finally took its toll...The number of subscribers dwindled ... both the costs and even the availability of the paper on which it was printed became challenging. Coupled with the public’s decreased interest in pictorial photography, these problems simply became too much...
--- Demise of Steichen's "Camera Work" 1915

[RSalles]

I don't see the division between serious and not serious, but a discernible difference between what is gonne be "shared". High megapixels embedded in DSLR and now in cellphones busted this aim for "sharing". Crime scenery speaking, I like the "witness calm" approach, not the witness disturbing the police with false visions of what he hoped has happened, ruining or slowing the investigation. Share is good, sick compulsion for sharing is, sick. I prefer not share then to share my dirty socks,

Cheers,

Renato

[koh303]

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

That also has an ad titled "we question everything" for what could easily be called the worst car ever made, by one of the worst auto makers in the world (still today). What changed? Nothing. The same is true about cameras.

[DannL]

Garret,

You should follow Collector Daily under the "galleries" & "museums" sections. https://collectordaily.com/

You will see that film is not the only method being used to put images on paper. There are also other methods that can be employed to produce works of "artistic merit".

The site appears to be a bit slow to react sometimes. It wasn't always that way. But, it still pulls up the pages. Patience is the key.

[Drew Wiley]

"Art" - most abused word is the dictionary. But if you really want recognition for having done something timeless, give up all these camera and film debates, go
crawl into a cave and sketch some wooly mammoths and aurochs and wooly rhinos with a burnt stick. All pre-digital, by the way.