The death of photography?

It reminds me of this catch phrase that was printed on a billion LP inner sleeves..... "home taping is killing music". 40 years later, there are even more ways to "steal" music, and yet people still create more. The music was never killed.

And I reckon that even though I don't consider myself a "real" photographer, the mere fact that I will never use a portable telephone to capture light, makes me think that photography is not dead...... at least not to this curmudgeon. (note to self.....read the article past the first paragraph......there must be something I missed).
 
Camera phones are the new instamatics. The number of people taking serious pictures with serious cameras has always been fairly small. My father took years of family photos (now fading and green) on Polaroid, which he loved. Our neighbors shot an instamatic, then disc. I imagine they are using their cell phones now. A reasonable facsimile of uncle Grouchy was more than enough for most people for most of photography's commerical history.
 
I can see how for news and media purposes the camera-phone is a boon to news organisations. After all the camera you have with you is the one that gets the shot.

But for photography as a fine art medium? Are we saying that popular photography is destroying photography as fine art? Did photography destroy fine art painting? Did painting destroy sculpture?

A question worth posing in a "Guardian-looking-up-its-own-backside" sort-of way.

LouisB
 
I took a better picture of the Mona Lisa getting mobbed

gCmy6UE.jpg
 
It's all about the eye, the heart, and the mind.

Years ago, Editor and Publisher reported on a workshop for news photographers. They showed up with their anvil cases full of Nikons and Hasselblads and were handed Instamatics and told to shoot with those. They still made great pictures.

There are, I think, many excellent photographers on this forum, but to single out just a couple, if you handed Ray Sachs or John Griggs disposable cameras and told them to go do their usual thing, they would still make interesting pictures.

By way of analogy, the wide availability of pens, word processing computers, and texting smart phones has not ruined my life as a writer.

Cheers, Jock
 
By the way, if one reads the article itself (rather than simply dismiss it because of where it was published) it is mainly quoting Antonio Olmos as proclaiming the death (although Eamonn McCabe has a moan too)
 
.....the mere fact that I will never use a portable telephone to capture light, makes me think that photography is not dead......
Check out BBW's Flickr stream sometime. She's been shooting with nothing but an iPhone for many months now, maybe a year or more, and she does some BEAUTIFUL photography with that little light capturing device. The medium (or tool) isn't the message - the message is the message.

Most photography since it was invented has been crap and there's more of it now because there's no cost to produce it and everyone has one (similar to why there are so many children still being made!). And there's nothing wrong with all of those family snaps, BTW. But some small percentage of people who use camera-like devices have always tried to do something more with it and some of them have always managed to create art with them. And still do. And always will, as long as there are cameras of any type around.

Photography ain't dead, just diluted to a slightly greater extent than in the past.

-Ray
 
Check out BBW's Flickr stream sometime. She's been shooting with nothing but an iPhone for many months now, maybe a year or more, and she does some BEAUTIFUL photography with that little light capturing device. The medium (or tool) isn't the message - the message is the message.

Thanks, Ray, thats my feeling too. I love BB's work, she does some amazing stuff.

I also love my iPhone camera. And my Ricoh, and my Nikon, and... yada yada... If people are going to get all precious because more people have access to photography than ever before, they need to ask themselves what they are doing it for. me.. I take photographs because I like to. And I *like* that photography is more accessible to the masses. I would have thought that was a good thing. If phone cameras are "stealing" work from professionals then perhaps they werent that good to start off with. I suspect the same people fretting over that are also the same people who fretted when digital photography happened along. They need to get over themselves.
 
My response was directed at the writer's assertion that the proliferation of camera phones were killing traditional photography. I never meant to imply (and don't think that I did) that camera phone photographs are any less of a photograph than one taken with a traditional picture-taking device.

And "Amen" to everything Sue said.
 
My response was directed at the writer's assertion that the proliferation of camera phones were killing traditional photography. I never meant to imply (and don't think that I did) that camera phone photographs are any less of a photograph than one taken with a traditional picture-taking device.
No, I got that. But it could easily be taken to imply that cell phone photography was a lesser beast (which much of it surely is) and that's obviously not the case...

-Ray
 
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