Whatever you want to say about the role of corporations in the ongoing war on liberal democracies (and there is a lot to be said, very little of it — if anything — complimentary), it also is a fact, yes: fact, that including cameras in so-called smartphones has done more to demonstrate photography’s full potential than anything that came before it, whether it was Louis Daguerre’s original process or the much touted Kodak Brownie.
Photography, in effect, was invented the wrong way around: first as an elitist tool that required skill and was subject too all kinds of restrictions. With time, those restrictions became looser and looser. But it took over 160 years before a camera function became embedded in a widely used communication tool: a telephone (at that stage finally untethered from its need for physical locations).
Photography had always been used to communicate something. But there was that aspect of control: who exactly controls how photographs are being made and where or how they are being shown?
Even as the Kodak Brownie with its famous slogan “You press the button, we do the rest” tried its hardest to have people forget about “the rest”, it was still there. Only the smartphone led to the situation where you press the little area on your phone’s screen that looks like a button, and there is your picture.
Now imagine that photography had not been invented in 1839. Imagine that photography had started out with the smartphone. In many ways, it’s an absurd exercise; but there is merit to it.
Imagine a world where everybody was able to make photographs and share them easily with others — and where, crucially, none of the thinking around them existed, the thinking that was created through the medium’s often torturous history.
In a nutshell, vast parts of the world of photography approach their medium not based on what it is able to do today, but only based on what it was able to do a long time ago.
The world of fine-art photography approaches the medium as if the world of salons, in which wealthy people showcase their wares, were still around. In modified form, that world has not disappeared. But the white-cube gallery with its clientele of oligarchs and other one-percenters has shorn all pretense of social settings and has instead embraced the sheer vulgarity of financial power.
As a consequence, the world of fine-art photography does not even remotely reflect or incorporate the excitement that exists around photography in the larger public sphere. “Theorists” instead bemoan the hoi polloi engaging in such exercises as taking selfies or presumably not enjoying whatever they’re engaged in when they photograph something (why people would consciously reduce their own enjoyment is never explained and how sharing one’s experience might contribute to one’s enjoyment is never considered).
The problem isn’t even so much that fine-art photography focuses only on the white cube or the photobook. I enjoy the latter a lot more than the former, but there is something to be said for a well-made exhibition. The problem is that there appears to be very little interest in exploring how photographs can be made to work beyond those two options.
In part, this has to do with one aspect the world of fine-art photography would rather not talk about: class. A lot of the observations made by Lee Cole about what it’s like to be a working-class writer in a prestigious MFA writing program could equally be made (possibly in slightly modified form) in the world of photography.
“While institutions—MFA programs, lit mags, publishing houses—have done much to include and elevate underrepresented groups on the basis of race, gender, or sexual orientation,” he writes, “they’ve done far less to include and elevate those from underrepresented class backgrounds.”
In the world of photography, underrepresented class backgrounds are included, but not in the fashion Cole has in mind. Underrepresented class backgrounds for sure are overrepresented as source material for photographs. “Source material” — that’s a hard term. But I think we have to be more honest about how most photographers think of the people they photograph.
The lines etched into someone’s face after they had to work two or three minimum-wage jobs to provide for their family make for great pictures. The actual person behind those lines, however, typically remains unseen, even as the one-percenters who might buy an oversized poster (“print”) tell themselves that, you see, they do care after all (they don’t).
Absent meaningful efforts for the inclusion and elevation of underrepresented class backgrounds, it’s probably no surprise that there is so little experimentation these days. Experimentation is not necessarily encouraged, and those most eager and/or willing to experiment — in part because of simple monetary restrictions — remain mostly excluded from both the community but also from the discourse around it.
One would have imagined that the various digital platforms that are used so widely would lead to an enlargement of ideas what can be done with photographs. But after some earlier experimentation with e-books and custom-made apps produced around specific bodies of work, my impression is that digital presentations have mostly become an afterthought again (if even that).
There are good reasons behind people pulling back from digital publishing, in particular the fact that for such products to reach a larger audience, they have to be accepted by the monopolies that control their dissemination. Google or Apple deciding whether an app can be sold through their “stores” is effectively a form of censorship.
Furthermore, actually producing an app or an elaborate website requires enormous expertise (and often money). Still, I can’t help but feel that while photobooks (which usually cost photographers a small fortune to make) are still being made in huge numbers, specialized websites for photography projects are not. To me, this feels like a huge wasted opportunity.
What all of this means is not only that there is considerable room to grow for fine-art photography. As a photographer, instead of spending endless time on figuring out which printer paper will give you the best results, you could start asking yourself why this even matters and whether there are not, in fact, better ways to spend your time: do you really want to focus so much on producing luxury products?
Furthermore, the general lack of experimentation provides a huge opening for all those who are eager to go this route. In a world where everybody is using the same techniques and approaches, the best way to set yourself apart is not only a focus on making the best possible version of whatever you want to make but also to make it in a fashion that feels true to yourself, the work, and the endless possibilities that exist and that for the most part remain unused.
I’d love nothing more for the world of fine-art photography to embrace more of the medium’s potential. Don’t get me wrong, I still love looking at photobooks. Still, I’ve arrived at a state where I find the overall lack of experimentation and the relentless focus on the same old outlets boring in a fashion that I can’t even describe with words any longer.
I see people out in the world having fun with photography, taking pictures with their phones, sharing them, sharing their excitement over them, appreciating the efforts made — and then I see the world of photography, a world almost entirely devoid of fun, excitement, and a willingness to expand a narrow and by now extremely tiresome approach to a medium that offers so much more.
That’s really depressing.