Camera Stuff. Traditional photography has been transformed. You can still do it any way you want but....

I traveled around Austin and across the country this week and I can truthfully say that, based on my current observations , coupled with our knowledge of the trends of the last two years,  the age of traditional photography as we knew it in the film days, and in the transitional days of the last decade, have come to an end. The ever present, single use cameras that were once part and parcel of every mom's, hipster's and gray-haired enthusiast's daily wardrobes have largely vanished from public sight
almost overnight like pay phone booths and DVDs.

It's not just that people in every walk of life have traded in their Nikons, Canons and random other dedicated, interchangeable lens cameras for the latest iPhones or Android phones, with their very precocious, built-in video/photo cameras rather, the great majority have given up the traditional pursuit of the traditional image. The act of taking an image with a large, single lens reflex camera seems as dated, in our current culture, as making a career out of painting in an abstract expressionist style.

We've truly entered the age of photographic minimalism, driven by the evolved informality of the share culture of web as represented by posted pictographic mini-conversations (a relatively scattered activity; at times not much more than a visual grunt ). The sharing is not the same as a traditional presentation in that now the photographs are part of a seemingly endless stream of good and bad imagery. A stream of unconsciousness, reflexively recharged ad infinitum.

Not only has the hardware used to create the images profoundly changed but with the prevailing subject matter becoming ever more restricted and self-referential, and the approach to (interpretation of) that content being shed of substance and meaningful context at a surprising rate as our culture has completely morphed our understanding of photographs from icons and sign posts to something as readily consumable as coffee. Which, coincidentally, is a large part of what gets photographed.

Photography has also moved from a visual dialog about things external to the artist and has become almost completely and exclusively about the artist. The selfie being one of the most obvious examples of encroaching and pandemic narcissism available in the entire history of mental health.

What used to be a symbol of one's dedication to imaging as a passion (the conventional camera) has become an almost embarrassing relic that instantly pegs one as being of a certain generation and mindset as surely as wearing a (non-smart, or is it "unsmart") wristwatch that merely tells time --- or ordering drip coffee as opposed to french pressse or espresso based coffee. The larger camera, festooned with a long, fast zoom lens, is as expressive, and potentially embarrassing a symbol (in today's pyramid of personal, wearables) of one's obsolescence as sporting a Palm Pilot or listening to music CDs on a Sony Walkman CD player.  The world, with a more or less anemic, quasi-cathartic shrug just moved on and this complete transition happened in the space of about two years. Tops. The eery thing is that all this seemed to creep up on us but we would have seen it coming if we'd only been paying attention.

I wondered why I felt the need to do my purge of all the extraneous cameras I'd built up, like calluses, over the years just a few months ago. I wondered the same thing when Michael Johnston started the process of shedding his camera collecting surplus all of a sudden and just a few weeks ago. Were these episodes the result of coming to some sort of subliminal tipping point in our collective psyches?
In a flash years of rationalization and earnest resolve re-directed in a reaction to an unseen but no less real shift of priorities and positions, styles and fashions.

For the first time in the month after the purge I never really felt a sense of loss for the equipment I had worked and researched so hard to accrue. All those cameras represented transitional tools without much future---even though they can be used in the same way they were always used, for years to come. The reality is that the precious stuff we tried to translate into substantive imagery missed the boat like paisley patterns surrendering to the next fashion wave.

Now I've left myself with two scaled down systems that each represent something different. I think our small, mirrorless camera system were a dodge on our part to try and delay a change that I now think is inevitable. The camera as accessory, as fashion, as daily seeing tool is completely over. We can continue to carry them and think about how much we need discrete, single use imaging tools but deep down the true, underlying knowledge has soaked in and we know that there's no vibrant cultural market for the images that used to be more about mastery than anything else. There's no reason to be "always ready" for the decisive moment if all moments are equally decisive and indecisive. If we're doing nothing more with the images than feeding the firehose that's draining the creative reservoir while saturating the ground our eyes walk on with homogenous product then really, what's the point?

I look at the Nikon cameras that I have in the studio. There are two. One is a D810 and it's a high resolution tool that we bring out to give clients the best technical quality we can bring to bear for a reasonable investment. The D610 is much the same but at a lower resolution tier that's more practical for more jobs. We use both of the cameras to produce video for clients as well. Neither camera is a sexy choice. Neither one emulates the newly trendy rangefinder design of decades past. Neither is whimsically small and compact. They aren't exciting to shoot. They are rudimentary tools and that's the way I see them now.

The Olympus cameras I own are, I think, a last gasp attempt to keep myself rooted in the type of photography that seemed to me to be different from the bifurcated imaging universe I see today; the current milieu divided between images done for money (Nikon) and images done as consumable and wholly narcissistic expressions (iPhones). To me the smaller, mirrorless cameras represent the Leicas we carried in leisure moments and during the shoots to which we brought the big medium format cameras to bear. The smaller cameras resonate with me and my generation because they are a meme and a psychological link to the cameras and photo styles of people whose work and celebrity we both appreciated and envied. The Robert Franks, Alex Webbs, Susan Meisales's, Sebastiao Salgados and so many others who made photography seem glamorous, thought provoking and elite.

We've moved, as a society, from a time when photography was a privileged form of expression--- from people who seemed to be blends of artist and mechanic. They knew the language and they knew how to make the lenses and rangefinders and meters do their bidding in the service of their creation. The turning points for everything in our photographic world came when presentation (in galleries, magazines, portfolios and books) was replaced by the self-involved narrative on the web--- in which the photographer is also actor and subject and a participant in his own constructions. And in many instances, the sole interested spectator.

In the end analysis will probably show that once something that was at one time difficult to do, difficult to present, and difficult to parse, becomes ubiquitous and all encompassing, and as simple as proletariat language, it loses its power in one sense and the power is replaced in a  different way. Now instead of a single image speaking to an attentive audience we have art as capacitor charging up with millions and millions of amazingly similar images until the concentration of images creates a universal reference current of that subject and individual interpretations are completely lost in the inertia to the median.

How else to explain the enormous drop in cameras sales? The drop in enrollment in photography courses? The drop in the use of commissioned images? The general malaise among hobbyists and enthusiasts? The ebb of students from any workshop that's not strictly vocational in service to the craft?

We'll all protest that I've misinterpreted this dip in the rhythm of traditional photography; and it may be that we are just waiting for it to be reinvented in some new way. I'd love for this to happen if it's true. But I think the days of the precious show of landscapes in a stark gallery with white walls all around and appreciative audiences wondering from well crafted print to well crafted print began to die the moment Flickr and the rest of the photo sharing sites were brought forth and flung freely to the masses. Pandora learned the hard way that once the box was open we were never going to go in reverse.

I still go to shows but it's more a reflection of my generational status. Many times the audiences at even the most important shows seem like conventions of men over 50. The world has moved on, we just like to see if we can sense the addictive residue of our time on the walls.

All this rambling doesn't mean for a second that we can't enjoy taking photographs for ourselves. It doesn't even mean that we can no longer create images for money, but it does mean that everything has changed and our culture is shifting. The screen is in peoples' hands now. The images are tiny. Because they are tiny they are much more fun if they are kinetic---always moving. That's where the ads are going and that's where the content is going and no matter how you pitch it the way we absorb images has changed and that makes imaging itself change.

This is neither bad nor good in an existential sense but I can't help remembering that every generation of product development is not aimed at making the consumer happier; it is aimed at making the product itself more economical to put together, less costly to ship, easier to repair  (or replace) and more indispensable. In the same way content is driven in the same direction. How do you make it easier to construct? More appealing to larger demographics? Easier and faster to deliver? And, much more profitable; even if that means millions paying pennies rather than hundreds paying real money?

The current thought poem for the culture of money and art is that rather than make one great thing that shows for a limited amount of time we can manipulate human curiosity by making many, many lesser productions and create a pipeline of continual release that keeps the curious and trend seeking constantly at the trough. That's the current and future middle of the Bell Curve of imaging today.

Is it any wonder that we're all a bit lost about the craft we loved so much?

I love the process. I won't stop. I'll keep shooting and printing even if I'm the only audience left but that doesn't keep me from being sad about what I think we're losing. Flip that around though and a different generation might see the shift as a gift. A plus. A natural part of the evolution cycle.

This may be true but I'm pretty certain that the current camera makers aren't going to be very happy about it either.

Finally, in fine art like painting, every new movement, cenaclé and school pushed out the ones that came before it. Fauvism, Pointillism, Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism, Minimalism, Pop Art and Op Art. Now we're back to Neo-realism (which is manifesto-disguised representational art). Each shift led the successors to destroy the interest in and appreciation of their previous ancestors. No reason why this shift in photography will be any different.

edit:  adding this link from five years ago: http://visualsciencelab.blogspot.com/2010/04/some-thoughts-about-future-of.html

Just re-read it and it seems cogent.

An interesting, tangential blog post from Thom Hogan: http://www.dslrbodies.com/newsviews/where-were-headed.html

A fun infographic that explains this better than I did: http://kindofnormal.com/truthfacts/2015/05/11