Photography As Art Is Dead?

Lee, I have to say I completely agree with you. With images everywhere and I mean everywhere I think people just get tired of looking as now anyone and everyone is a photographer, bad images or not. And you have all these digital shooters selling prints for nickels on the dollar it was only an amount of time before it really started to hurt the industry as a whole.

So yes, I enjoy creating traditional images but digital has completely devalued them to the point where people don’t care of the difference and don’t care to pay my price when they can shoot it themselves or buy it for $20 done on inkjets.

I also find myself agreeing with what Lee wrote. The proliferation of stock images, something Kevin mentions, has created a micro-stock and so-called custom stock (basically images on speculation) market, fuelled by Getty and Corbis having bought out many imaging companies. People who use to make a living doing stock photography are having a very rough time. I think in some ways that public perception of low or no cost imaging adversely affects that.

Lack of credentials, lack of true organization, and a lack of understanding hurt photography as a profession. While APA, EP, and ASMP efforts do help photographers, they do so more at a legal or government level, rather than helping any public awareness of photography. The marketing efforts of companies wanting to sell ever more cameras also gives the impression of it being all too easy. The average person in public does not know what a medium format camera is, nor even that there are such things as new large format cameras . . . many of us probably get questions about whether we can still get film for that or perhaps even surprise that we can shoot colour film in our cameras. :confused:

While I found the original article to contain the usually too short oversimplifications, the problem is I think it did reflect some in the general public. Speak to professionals and enthusiasts, then different approaches are required. The original article seemed aimed at a segment of the general public; and I found trouble with it because there was little that would further interest in photography. I doubt the writer cared about how professional photographers nor how photography enthusiasts viewed the article.

Where I am living currently, I see some portrait photographers doing outdoor images with medium format cameras. The funny aspect is that some people perceive the larger cameras as somehow more professional; perhaps just by being a bit different. There is often too much emphasis on the gear being more important than the images. This is where I think the art aspect of photography fails. When the magic is no longer in the image, then people get the idea they can do it themselves. It should make little difference in my oil paintings whether I use Windsor & Newton paints, or some other brand; the choice is simply my personal preference, not some formula (equipment) ensuring good results.

I saw some of this in the past weekend at a local event called Art Walk. There were many fine art photographers showing images, and quite a few fielded lots of technical questions of how their images were created. I don't think it is bad to educate people in some techniques, but the danger is making it sound too easy. People don't arbitrarily take up drawing or painting, because they understand there is effort involved; but photography often can only be difficult when they cannot get the results they want.

There is an entire industry now just in teaching people to do photography. However, much of that now is an emphasis on gear and technology, rather than understanding what makes an image compelling. I still think drawing skills are the skills that had the greatest impact on my photography, and we all know that pencils and a sketchbook don't cost much.

Ciao!

Gordon

and we all know that pencils and a sketchbook don't cost much.

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But buying the portrait or drawing seomone did with the pencil and notebook does. That is the difference. They are not letting there drawing go for $15-20 bucks and saying this is the norm.

kjsphoto said:

and we all know that pencils and a sketchbook don't cost much.

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But buying the portrait or drawing someone did with the pencil and notebook does. That is the difference. They are not letting there drawing go for $15-20 bucks and saying this is the norm.

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Oh, I definitely agree. It surprised me to see people at Art Walk selling prints so cheaply. If someone does not value their own work, or see it too much as a commodity, then that is their choice. Unfortunately, I don't want to show or sell my work under such conditions, and I think others doing that make it tougher on everyone else. One of the funniest was two different artists sharing a booth that had prints for sale, with a sign "1 for $20, 3 for $75" . . . my guess is this is the mentality of client they were attempting to attract. It reminds me of that saying that some people know the price of everything, and the cost of nothing.

There are unfortunately people out their who place little value in what they do. On another forum, I saw a suggestion from a professional stock shooter to price things lower, but show the clients wanting low priced images items that are lower quality, then further suggesting showing better quality higher priced images to try upselling the client. Seriously, not one other person on that forum agreed with that approach; the worse part is that for the one guy who did post that to a professional forum, there are probably several hundred just like him who never post to the internet, in other words I doubt he was the sole exception. It is people like him who place little value in their work that are causing huge problems. What other profession survives on arbitrary and variable pricing?

The other way to look at this, and the reason I mentioned drawing, is that you cannot buy your way into good photography. This should be the incentive and help to those new to photography; the idea not that you need certain gear, but that you need to work the best with what you can afford. I have several very old cameras I use for some of my fine art photography just for that concept, though I look at it in a way that when these old cameras were new, there were people making quite compelling images with them. The art, to get back to the original posting, was in the creative vision of the photographers; they just happened to have technically lesser gear than is available to photographers today.

Ciao!

Gordon

Lee Shively said:

A little too wordy and clumsy, perhaps, but also correct. We're bombarded with mediocre images to the point that our special art of photography is becoming insignificant. We can deny it if we wish. I don't think we traditional photographers should worry so much about the discontinuance of film, chemicals, photographic paper and film cameras. What we do could simply become considered irrelevant.

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And just think about all of the advertising images we get bombarded with all of the time!

photography has been slowly dying since george made it possible for everyone and his uncle to have and use a camera. it is no longer an science-based art form where people mix raw chemicals bought at the neighborhood apothecary/druggist, practice dangerous methods of coating+processing plates, and use papers from overseas if they are not made from scratch.

photography until recently has always been a hands-on affair, where the photographer not only made the exposure, processed the film, made the paper-print, but retouched negatives, hand-tinted, intensified, removed, scraped, graphite-dusted, masked, sharpened, combined elements from other negatives, "montaged" &C negatives and prints. mini-labs, pro-labs, photo-kiosks, and now scanners and computer programs have changed photography from a hands on affair to something completely different, more of a leisure art where the photographer pushes a button (camera), and the rest is done for him through the aid of a robot or drone.

yes, photography is dying, but it will be a slow death.

While not always true...generally, art is 'valued' based on aesthetic value (there are great images, paintings, drawings, etc. and there are poor ones), craft (how good is the quality, how difficult to craft (this may get to the digital vs. analog debate) and historical value (i.e. what tools were avail then, was the technique, craft, imagery ahead of its time?). What I see, is very few 'educated' art viewers....in these respects. Mind you, I am not trying to be 'snobby', but some have no clue as to the difficulty of the craft, the creativity necessary for the aesthetic and the historical impact. No, I don't believe photography as an art is dead, quite the contrary. I think art in and of itself, is dying...as a result of education. Art taught in schools is on the decline and has been.

It's interesting to me as I have attempted various forms of art, or viewed others at their craft (my wife is a jeweler, for example, metalsmith), ie. become more educated....I have gained a greater appreciation of the work as art! Once you begin to appreciate and understand what it took to, for example, make that photograph (how, what materials, creativity of the image itself, etc.) you can begin to place more value on it as an art form, imho.

Now, for an entirely different matter.....collecting art and value thereof....

I watched a famous painter (whales, dolphins) known for painting on large buildings...charging $1250 for a 'unique' work, a painting, (16x20 paper) signed by the artist....and he would paint it right in front of you! Took him about 5 minutes....and you got to pick your animal (whale or dophin, basically).....one color, black. And he sold DOZENS...good for him, I have no problem with it....but Art? Value? I.e were you buying the piece itself, or a piece of the artist.....This can be a slippery slope....

Tony Egan said:

Having said this I think we are in somewhat of a battle with the broader population with respect to maintaining photography as a fine art and craft when it has been trivialised as a mere accessory in a mobile phone!

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well said Tony. I think the battle lies in keeping the value of traditional photography high in the public view. The public is used to seeing photos online and on TV. They buy cheap images in the form of movie posters, rock star posters, calenders, postcards, and now cd's. The public could care less if the print was contact-printed from a 12x20 negative onto a hand-made platinum paper and duo-toned.

avandesande said:

In the end they conclude that digital photography has destroyed the one special thing about photography; the underpinning of reality.

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Which in my mind only demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of photography. The idea that a photograph was always an accurate reflection of reality before digital is a commonly held misconception among the masses, but I don't see how anyone who actually understands what goes into making a photograph would believe such.

"In the very beginning, when the operator controls and regulates his time of exposure, when in the dark room the developer is mixed for detail, breath, flatness or contrast, faking has been resorted to. In fact every photograph is a fake from start to finish, a purely impersonal, unmanipulated photograph being practically impossible. When all is said, it still remains entirely a matter of degree and ability." -Edward Steichen

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"So easy is it to produce these images that our culture has reached saturation point."

Ahhh the digital revolution...or revulsion.

Both work.