Photography Never Died
Lately the photography sphere has been inundated, not with the gazillions of photos everyone is talking about, but with article after article proclaiming that photography is dead/over/irrelevant/trash.
The questionable assumption here is that it was ever alive in the first place, but what puzzles me most is how this status has been defined. And it is about status in the end, because the reasons given for photography’s untimely (or exceedingly timely, depending on the source) demise are invariably centered around the rise of social media, short attention spans, instant sharing and, inevitably, cat pictures.
Yes, you.
Just a nice short and well written essay explaining that while the hype may move on, the real work of photography - that small niche of people doing art like always - will continue.
Back in the 70’s ~ 80’s people rediscovered relatively cheap old 8x10 Deardorf and other big old wooden cameras and the utter fascination and joy of 8x10 contact prints. For a time there was a dedicated cadre of people doing amazing work with them, utterly unknown to most people who would think of photography as what they did on vacation or what was in the magazines on their coffee table. There have always been the hardcore and there have always been the the average joe. In the future, there will be phones filling the role of Brownie & Instamatic; it remains to be seen what will be the next hardcore toy. My guess is old 35mm SLR’s since the bloodletting has slowed to a trickle at the film factories.
Enjoy, have fun, create.
