Where do your pictures reside?

Rajiv, that piece kind of made my brain hurt a little and reminded me of my art history days, especially when we came to "contemporary art". I think the premise at the end is already becoming reality, don't you? Though truth be told since I'm not a professional photographer, I probably am not the best person to really comment.

Let's see what others think - and what do you think?
 
Rajiv, that piece kind of made my brain hurt a little and reminded me of my art history days, especially when we came to "contemporary art". I think the premise at the end is already becoming reality, don't you? Though truth be told since I'm not a professional photographer, I probably am not the best person to really comment.

Let's see what others think - and what do you think?

BB, at a rudimentary level, I think I made a mistake buying a honking big camera, with the notion that I'd be making prints, while the reality lies in the fact that people are getting more comfortable viewing it on screens and electronic surfaces, the web and it's really about a shared experience, which is only possible because of the medium.

Print making (don't yell at me! just talking here) seems to me to be an act of hoarding where a picture becomes 'exclusive' and 'secretive' as opposed to the exact opposite where online you have no clue who is looking at your pictures. Unless you're shooting billboards, where my analogy falls flat.

I don't really know what to make of it, but I found the essay intriguing. I'll get back to you with an answer once I've had a bit of a think about it!
 
I guess whether or not it's a good development depends on two things.

One: will art works that are less photogenic be disadvantaged? (the author touches on this himself as well). I guess that's merely a balance issue.

And two, will art consumers still desire to see the art in real life? If future generations (and possibly my generation as well) aren't used to admiring an artwork in real life, if they're used to experiencing art through a photo on a website, or at best walking through a museum snapping away and getting the "real" enjoyment out of viewing the pictures digitally at a later time, will they start to feel that seeing a photo of an artwork is good enough? If that's the case, the overall market for artworks to be bought might shrink over time, eroding the income stream of artists, unless they manage to promote their art in a format that gets them lots of attention but that doesn't allow people the long-time satisfaction that a jpeg on their computer would - but that seems like a difficult task!
 
I'm glad others are commenting here.

In my photography days of old, I specialized in color developing and printing and I absolutely loved and thrived in my very basic darkroom as I printed from both color negatives and slides. I will always have nostalgia for those days and feel quite proud of the work I did back then.

But this is now and I don't want to be in that kind of darkroom again - not that others shouldn't.

We're in a digital age and the ubiquitous nature of screens from phones to tablets to huge screens like the kind in Times Square, etc., make art much more available to "the people"...just as the printing press brought the printed word to "the people" (let's not split hairs about whether Gutenberg really did this or not.;)) so I think screens are here to stay until we come up with even more ways to show photography.... However, that article is talking about sculpture, paintings, performance art, installations, etc. and that's "a horse of another color" though for many access is what is key...

My hope is that the world can have both digital/screen galleries or showplaces, as well as "the real thing" as in bricks and mortar or, as in the article, a forest setting, etc.
 
Your idea is outstanding the issue is one thing that not enough persons are speaking intelligently about. I am very completely satisfied that.
 
People will still print out/buy larger images to display, but the days of stacks of family photo albums is disapearing.

I personaly have photos stored in three locations, two of which are shared with family/friends. I have at home a digital frame in which I keep current family shots. My wife also maintains a wall collage of recent family kid photos.
 
Back
Top