I recently read an interesting article on Newsweek entitled “Is Photography Dead?” It’s an old article, but still felt very relevant. Such a title already grabbed me with interest. What could the author be getting at? Obviously photography is alive and well, and perhaps some would say it’s even too saturated. As I read the article though, it became clear that something was resonating deep within me.

For a while I was struggling to find more photography that truly moved me. “Deep calling unto deep” as KSparks would put it (a reference only my CMC friends will get). I wanted to make one of the new Flickr galleries of photos that inspired me, and I thought I should limit it to where my heart is at right now with photography. It was easy to say that my heart right now is definitely in portraits. Not just photos with people in them, but true portraits where the subject is looking into the camera, interacting with the photographer, sharing a piece of their soul (or perhaps consciously hiding it). Biographic photography, so to speak. As I perused Flickr, trying to find photos that fit my criteria, I discovered how difficult it was to find photos that spoke to me where I am now. And I think this article explained at least one reason why. Photography has fractured into those who take photos and those who create them.

I wouldn’t say one is better than the other or one is more “artistic” or “true”. Even something that is completely fabricated can have deep Truth in it. But something is different in the majority of photographer’s minds today compared to photography’s early beginnings. It’s not just a digital vs. film dichotomy, though digital’s dominance is an indicator of what’s happening. Just recently, the two big digital camera makers, Canon and Nikon, both announced their new pro level cameras with ISO levels that reach above 100,000. You could essentially take decent photos outside on a cloudy night with no external lighting. Basically, night vision. Of course for the most part this is just to provide much less digital noise at more reasonable ISO levels, something I’m all for. But it just feels like another step on the path of digital becoming a way photographers can fabricate reality into whatever they want.

But like I said, that’s not necessarily a bad thing or any less art. But originally, photography as a medium was never viewed as a way to fabricate reality, but to capture reality, as beautiful or raw as it is before your eyes. As it began to make its way into the art world, it was always looked down upon as an artistic medium because it was so easy to do. A painter has to learn about how to use a brush, how to combine colors, how to recreate from blobs of color what the eye (or the mind) sees. It takes great skill to produce a final painting of a scene. With photographer, all you need to know is how to press a shutter. But therein became the real artistic challenge. As cited in the Newsweek article, Lisette Model said, ”Photography is the easiest art, which perhaps makes it the hardest.” Photography became a way to capture the art of a moment of time or of the essence of a person, and perhaps make a statement based on that. Doing that is the real difficulty in photography. And I think that too many modern photographers are forgetting that in favor of doing “flashy” kinds of photos that make you say “Ooooooo, purty,” but are ultimately forgettable. We use Photoshop to paint away a woman’s flaws that give her character, creating an “ideal” woman who doesn’t even exist. Or we add bits of manipulations like bokeh textures or fake Polaroid borders or HDR the hell out of a photo till we think it captures our eye’s attention, when in reality the original photo had no soul or depth to begin with. A lot of photographers now (I’m guilty of this myself) spend a lot of time trying to make their photos look exactly like it would have looked if they had shot film instead of digital. Photographers go to shoots thinking “close enough” is applicable to their photos just as much as hand grenades and horseshoes (as the saying goes). In the end, when one views the final result, it seems you always have to ask yourself, “Is this photo at all what the photographer saw before pressing the shutter?”

Again, there is nothing inherently wrong in manipulating a photo digitally. People have been doing it with film in a darkroom since the 70’s. It can be a very useful tool in creating a piece of art that truly is beautiful or speaks to some great human depth. But along the way, far too many photographers have abused these tools, bastardizing what once was an artistic medium all about capturing only what the eye saw. And somehow it’s become the popular norm. No, photography isn’t dead. But I think for far too many photographers, it’s become something else entirely.

These are merely ideas in my head developing. I’m open to discussion if you’d like to post your opinion in the comments.