Is Photography Dead?

[steve simmons]

This is the title of an article in the current issue of Newsweek.


steve simmons

[Dan Fromm]

No, Newsweek is dead. After several years of my not responding to renewal notices Newsweek has stopped turning up in my mailbox.

[Bruce Watson]

This is the title of an article in the current issue of Newsweek.

As if anyone cares what newsweek thinks.

[Greg Lockrey]

What's a "Newsweek"?

[Walter Calahan]

Uninspired journalism.

[Jorge Gasteazoro]

I think the author of the article has little understanding of what "art" photography is all about. It has never been about "reality" and this is specially true in B&W since the inherent nature of the medium alters reality from the get go.

I dare anybody to go to Yosemite and see what AA printed.... It does not exist, what he did by dodging and burning altered reality, so at best there is a tenuous link between what is captured in the negative and the final printed photograph.

I find it ironic that what he claims has killed photography is what I hope will be the future of digital. I hope to see those using digital to start calling themselves digital artists instead of photographers (pretty much like Crhis Jordan has done) and start bringing digital imaging into a different medium that bridges "photography" and painting.
Stop this "digital silver prints" or "digital platinum prints" and start developing their own medium with their own special attribuites.

Regardless of what I think of Jordan's motivation I think he did something very important. He created art that is significantly different from traditional photography, something that would have been extremely difficult to do in the traditional way, if not impossible. Like painting, digital has the possibility of giving free to the imagination of those who use it, I beleive this is where the strenght of digital resides (and it's weakness).

[Brian Ellis]

If you get past the title the article itself is actually pretty interesting and not exactly controversial or revolutionary. I don't think there's anything in it that's seriously subject to question. Its basic point is that because of the ease with which images can be created and manipulated digitally "photography is finally escaping any dependence on what is in front of a lens, but it comes at the price of its special claim on a viewer's attention as "evidence" rooted in reality." Hardly a novel thought, the effect of digital editing on the "believability" of photography has been discussed and acknowledged for years. Most of the article consists of a thumbnail sketch of the history of photography with a lot of omissions and oversimplifications but that's o.k. it's a magazine article, it doesn't purport to be a text book for a history of photography course, and it's a good read for someone unfamiliar with the history of photography.

[Daniel_Buck]

I think SERIOUS photography is fading. Of people I know, probably 95% of them who say they are "into photography", they really mean that they take snap shots every now and then, or that they own some pentax k1000 somewhere in the attic (or a new DSLR that they don't know how to use). I know very few people who will actually plan a trip just to take photos, or spend any length of time with their photography. It's a little disheartening, but doesn't bother me to much.

I'm not old enough to know if this is how it's always been or not, but it seems to me that it must have been bigger in the past.

[paulr]

Headlines are often written by editors who have different goals from the ones of the writer. Seems like the closer a publication is to infotainment, the more the headlines are designed to rile people up and get them to read the article (and look at the ads!)

I think SERIOUS photography is fading.

I think it would be more accurate to say that non-serious photography is rising (as it has been ever since Kodak introduced the Brownie ... every innovation that makes it easier or cheaper also makes it more democratic).

But I see no sign of serious photography fading, if you define that as photography by people who are serious about it. There are more high end galleries than ever showing photography, more money being spent by collectors, more and larger museum collections, more people studying in bfa and mfa programs, and on the commercial end, I bet there's at least as much money as ever being spent on photography.

[Brian Ellis]

"I think the author of the article has little understanding of what "art" photography is all about. It has never been about "reality" and this is specially true in B&W since the inherent nature of the medium alters reality from the get go. I dare anybody to go to Yosemite and see what AA printed.... It does not exist, what he did by dodging and burning altered reality, so at best there is a tenuous link between what is captured in the negative and the final printed photograph."

Jorge - I don't think the author of the article would disagree with you. He or she said that pre-digital when you saw a photograph you assumed that what was in the photograph had at one time been in front of the photographer's lens, more or less. Of course that assumption wasn't necessarily correct, people merged images even in the darkroom ala Jerry Uelsmann, but it was correct for 99.9% of the photographs we saw. But now according to the author that's no longer true, we have no idea whether the things we see in a photograph (or a poster or whatever you want to call it) ever actually existed or that the photographer ever was actually "there" to photograph them.

I certainly agree with you about Adams but I think the author would as well. I think the author would say - "yes, Adams' photographs weren't just about "reality," but when we saw his photograph of the horse in the meadow with mountains in the background we knew that Adams had been to that meadow and while he was there that horse had been in that meadow and those mountains had been behind that meadow, etc. etc. As you say, the actual scene didn't look anything like Adams' photograph but we correctly assumed that Adams had actually been to that place and the objects that were in the photograph had actually been present while he was there. Today if we saw the same image for the first time we'd have no clue - for all we know he might have just sat in front of his computer and cobbled together three different photographs of a horse, a meadow, and some mountains and merged them in Photoshop.

So I think that's the basic point of the article, not that photography before digital was just documentation or "reality," but that it had an element of believability or actuality or whatever exactly one wants to call it that no longer exists. Since that's a pretty commonly accepted notion, I found the article interesting but not anything new or controversial. It just has a provocative title.