The Death of Photography 2 and Ten Anachronisms of Aspirational Bogans

 

Shane w/ cameras

Is photography dead?

No, not really. It’s just been swamped by Bogans with ‘phones and other gear.

As Juilee Pryor said in her piece in the last blog that “… the savage swiftness of this phenomenon (I-Phones, Instagram, filters etc) set in place a mild but tenacious depression…….”  and that ….. “I was feeling redundant and all those years of dedicated work and accumulated skill in the art, craft and science of my photography was reduced to pretty much nothing.”

That may be true but I don’t doubt that the photographers who attended Clarke Field with their Graflexes the evening the Hindenburg tragically caught fire would have eschewed the capacities of the modern digital camera to properly expose and store not only still images but also video simultaneously.

Much as the advent of the 35mm camera with its portability and discrete size assisted the development of photojournalism and the picture magazine, the I-phone’s proliferation means that all who hold it can record a scene as it happens and upload it to the world. Making all who hold it a potential journalist. 

LG in Red

The Chicago Sun-Times has just sacked all 28 of its photographers.

The journalists are the ones, with I phones, who will make the picture content.

http://cnnphotos.blogs.cnn.com/2013/06/21/we-are-the-chicago-sun-times-photography-department/

But in this turn of the wheel there is a catch. There may be some who may take the time to consider what they are photographing and eventually will work out that the image making process is different from the reporting and writing process.

The commonness of images and image making equipment has led to a lowering of visual aesthetic expectation: apart from there being too much to see and not enough time to see it, it has also lowered the value of the talent and time spent making an image which resonates.

When everything that “looks” OK will do and it is very much a case of, “I did this therefore this is good or good enough. And who are you to criticise anyway? ”  

White

Some of these types even pretend to “Teach” photography, too!

Tennis Australia is currently offering photographers the “opportunity” to use their own expensive DSLR’s, Tele lenses, software, computer, organisational and production skills for nothing except the possibility of on-line publication.

And the warm inner glow of photographing sweaty athletes.

I was recently “offered” the opportunity to spend hundreds of dollars advertising in a mag that basically is the showcase for someone else’s photography!

There is probably still the same number of “practitioners” of real skill as there used to be but as I said, the Bogans and the technology swamp them. The ubiquity of the technology has not only multiplied the numbers of images it has allowed the adding of another category to the craft, the “selfie”. Which is radically different from a portrait or self-portrait.

The latter subject titles imply on one hand a considered approach more like a painters’ seriousness of intent in “capturing” a likeness or allegorical meaning; The “Selfie” on the other is more bound up in the narcissism of self-promotion and the constant exploitation of physical personality.

Works like those of Gillian Wearing, Cindy Sherman, Arnulf Rainer and Lukas Samaras are the opposite of the vapid and aesthetically inconsequential “selfie” plastered over the web and even though some might hold a candle for and rank the works of Hester Scheurwater as “Art”, I still think 0x0 = 0

Photography’s not dead but is quite sick.

Wombat Droppings or The Low-down on Oz Politics

Anachronism 1  “Rabbott” wants Labor to repent on its sinful Carbon Price Legislation and in attempting to address climate change. 

Anachronism 2  “Rabbott” hasn’t repented for vilifying Slippery Pete or being bent himself.

Anachronism 3  “Rabbott” hasn’t visited the Aborigines he said he would in his first week in power. He should repent.

Anachronism 4  “Rabbott” said he would stop the boats.  The boats keep coming. Repent, again.

Anachronism 5  “Rabbott” has impressed ones, Barbara Speed and Olivia Hallo. Big Deal! 

Anachronism 6  “Rabbott” has an Attorney General whose ego is as big as his rorted library.

He’s a Far Norther… he’ll never repent. 

Anachronism 7  “Rabbott” sees no conflict of interest in the Pacific Trade Deal, his “Pollie Pedal” Sponsors and the PBS.

Anachronism 8  “Rabbott” sees as much value in “Scientific Whaling” as he does in grazing cattle in National Parks as a conservation method. 

Pity ‘bout the introduced weeds in the merde. 

Whose merde? We haven’t discovered.

Anachronism 9  Journalism and Andrew Bolt

Anachronism10   Fiscal rectitude and the Liarbril Party brand of Loyalty.

Anachronism10a Geoff "Fiddles" Shaw and good behaviour.

  

Cheers Petals,

Shane.

Sitedfigures

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