The idea that photo artists can support themselves by licensing their work, instead of squeaking by makes sense. Applying practical business models to what was otherwise “fine art”, delivers images for museums curators, galleries, and well-heeled collectors to a larger audience. The downside: whatever the commercial market gets its hands on, it changes; usually for the worse, not better. We have been living in this age for some time now and, I’m so bored.
As pages of glossy literary magazines fill with images pulled straight from portfolio reviews and MFA critiques, the power of the images begin to shift. Art schools now are breeding grounds for making great pitches and building networks. Portfolio reviews and “festivals” are status signals and tantamount to minor league baseball teams. Slowly and then suddenly, the photo artist became a commercial content provider in the marketplace. The homogenizing of the work took effect. Everything looks the same. The art world is the art market.
Let me light a candle instead of curse this darkness. The fact people communicating with images more than ever is interesting. What I think is bad is the idea that successful photography is based on how many people like it, and if you can get a book cover deal from it. Status doesn’t equal quality.
Art and commerce need to live together in some way. To wish for some form of “purity” is to harken back to an even more exclusive, whitewashed world where everything looked like Walker Evans or Gary Winnogrand just barfed on it.
The photo world has become a lot more democratic. That’s nice.
Like most nice things, we screw it up. We put cameras in our phones. Our phones became tracking devices to some unknown entity, living in air conditioned bunkers, with whirring servers, storing every over-saturated picture of breakfast we take. This information is for sale until some doomsday nut pulls the plug on the whole thing. Then we’ll be left with paper and pencil.
Now that everyone “takes” pictures, people should really “make” them. I look to people younger seamlessly integrating the commercial and art world together to actually make the world and work better. Instead of narrowing down the palette, we’re in a period of robust expansion where new voices, once ignored, are getting heard and celebrated. Everything has been far too white and dudish for too long.
It’s good to see the photography world really reflect the people in it. What is becomes very clear is you don’t have to forget the history in order to appreciate the new directions that have stemmed from it. Irving Penn is still a great photographer. The people he influenced, don’t look like him. They are making work that is just as great, if not better. That’s how it should be.