Increasingly, we live in an age espousing the end of Photography. Whether it be from the smartphone’s market takeover, the rise of artificial intelligence or social media’s devaluation of creativity, the message is clear: “real” photographers are about to be replaced.  

https://fb.watch/qsOSwNjtCo

The End of Photography (2006) by Judy Fiskin

Was the film what you were expecting? The truth of our current situation in photography is that we’ve already moved beyond photography into something else. Perhaps, imaging is a better word. Let’s explore. 

The image below illustrates the origins of the Camera (a light-tight box for projecting the phenomena of inverted light). This tool had been in use for over 300 years before photography came along and redefined it’s application forever.  

The inventor of photography Joseph Nicéphore Niépce’s original motivations for creating a fixed image, resulting from the use of a camera obscura (similar, though smaller, than the one above), was to navigate around the technical skill needed for traditional lithography. His invention, coined “heliography” (photography was named later), introduced a process that a mere technician could use to produce a result far superior to those made by even the most skilled lithographers and illustrators. 

The processes used in producing a photographic image have varied widely since the term “photograph” was used to describe the resulting image. So much so, in fact, that a photographer from the 1850’s, using a copper plate applied with a thin coat of silver, sensitized with iodine, and exposed to mercury vapor in order to produce an image, would likely not only not understand the “magic” of modern digital photography, but wouldn’t even see it as photography. Some photographers who worked with film during the introduction of digital cameras didn’t see digital photography as “photography” either (as we saw in the film by Fiskin). 

After all, photography, as it was originally coined, is the fixation of an image onto a physical substrate brought about by a chemical reaction to the exposure of light, while digital photography is nothing more than a shuffling of computer data stimulated by photons. Yes, modern digital cameras, especially interchangeable lens cameras, do emulate older film cameras in how they function, but this is not exactly a requirement for digital image capture and the longer we move away from the film era, the less and less these cameras indeed share with their film predecessors.

Back to artificial intelligence for a moment. Much of the anger towards AI-assisted imaging comes from the position of a perceived threat to what humans can accomplish alone, i.e. landscape photographers that see an impossible to beat challenger, stock photographers unable to compete with the a la carteness of limitless prompts, etc. These are of course rational fears for photographers that work in this way, and certainly, AI imaging will disrupt (and has already disrupted) those industries and more.

That said, even photographers that reject AI image generators gladly embrace AI image correction in their own work, whether or not they recognize it as such. What’s amusing about this fear, however, is that photography itself was viewed in this way for much of its early history, by painters and other traditional artists. Remember how photography was literally designed to replace traditional lithography?

Below, we see an example of how lithography was used that was completely usurped by photography.

What these fearers of “replacisim” fail to acknowledge is the extreme advantages they have over a complete novice in using these technologies, were they only to embrace and actually use them. To put it another way, an established landscape photographer would know better the compositional requirements, sales requirements and platforms available for AI landscape photography than someone just starting out, and would merely need to identify ways to integrate the new technology into their practice, if income is the primary concern.

And this, I think, brings us to the point of this essay: How do we find our place as image-makers in a world completely inundated by imagery while simultaneously under threat from technology? In all of this, what is the point of our own image-making? How do we slow down and engage more thoughtfully with our processes for image generation? What does it mean to be a “photographer”?

First up, what is our relationship to our cameras and the images they make? Within the broad spectrum of motivations behind our image-making; does a photograph actually make a document, and if so, is the document of the subject in front of the camera or the one behind it?

Some years ago, I was traveling to Pearl Harbor on a bus with a group of strangers. I watched how these individuals used their cameras. At first, I was merely interested in what they were deciding to photograph, hoping to not miss anything important myself. At the cue of the tour guide, I saw time and again, the many arms of passengers swing up with cameras at the ready: to record anything, everything, or nothing at all. Again and again, I saw images being created that could not possibly have been concerned about “what makes a good photograph”. While it is true that most of my fellow travelers did not consider themselves photographers, and so had not been trained in either camera operation or image composition, each of these persons made as many (or more) photographs as I did. Why?

The answer is an old one, and quite simple to rationalize; a photograph is a trophy, or a proof that one has been somewhere or done something. Consider the two images above. The right image illustrates an animal shot and killed by the couple stationed just behind it. This image records both the death-dealing wound inflicted upon the beast, and the tool that delivered it. Meanwhile, the left photograph does exactly the same thing. It demonstrates both the prey that the couple hunted for, and their triumph in finding it. For a vast number of images created and shared today, this is their purpose and it is an acceptable and effective one—for most photographers though, we seldom feel fulfilled in achieving this goal alone. Our aim is often something entirely different. What is not said here is how AI will effect this pursuit. Will less images be generated because images are less trustworthy?

As a child, I do remember making photographs on vacation, but I do not recall my family making dozens, let alone hundreds. It seems clear then that the action of making images has become attached to the act of experiencing an event, which probably has much to do with social media providing an instant and ever present platform for sharing visual content. Now, when we see an exotic place for the first time, attend a social event, or go through any life process worthy of reflection, it is quite likely that this experience shall be somehow tempered in our memory by the activation and use of an image-recording device. In this way, the camera becomes an ingredient impacting the action of our senses upon memories inferred. The camera acts as a portal through which our past reality passes through into an enlightened one; this is a very necessary process in terms of our internal categorization of life events and explains some of the fetishization that photographers (especially in the digital age) have for their gear.

The camera no longer serves as just a vehicle upon the journey of producing a fine print. In this new world, the individual image is, in fact, often close to meaningless (a truth declared by the quantity of images available and the easy means to produce such a quantity). Rather, the camera is now the most important element of photography, for it is the device directly linked to and informing our conclusions about life itself.

Of course, this is troublesome if you value images. However, if you disagree (and I hope that you do believe that the image is more important than the act of making it), consider for a moment what the ratio is of your own photographs that you have printed versus those stored in the vault of your hard drive. If that ratio is even 1:1000, you should feel extremely productive.

Granted, I’ll admit, most of the images that we share today are shared electronically. Yet, do you believe that the impact upon the viewer is the same for electronic images as for printed images? How many images have you seen online just today? How many do you really remember? How many do you remember from last week? Last month? If the viewer’s relationship to an electronic image is less meaningful than to a print, why would photographers ever concede to such a betrayal of their medium?

Considering that the world now produces more than 1.8 trillion photographs annually (that’s over 57,000 every second), is it truly a surprise that the collective impact of any single image is reduced exponential to the total amount generated? Yet, photographs CAN continue to impact. And here is where we will begin to bridge that gap between the action and the reasons for it.

To simplify, using the traditional example, consider what happens when a photographer takes a picture.  First, he or she places themselves in a space. Then, he or she brings the camera to their face creating a frame for their vision, which incidentally, renders the three-dimensional world in front them into a two-dimensional plane. Soon, something about the organization of forms on this plane compels the photographer to take a picture. But that’s only what happens physically and intellectually—psychologically, spiritually, emotionally, whatever you want to call it, something else happens as well.

Photography, at its root, is three things: 1. the recording of light phenomena (sometimes invisible to the human eye); 2. a means of communication (sometimes for a conversation that we have only with ourselves); 3. a means of interaction (between the photographer and the world around them). In the overlap between the first two, we see all of the photographs ever made, which of course, says very little about the purpose of their creation—the third is needed for that. Some photographs exist to sell a product, some exist to document an event, some exist to determine an instantaneous interaction at home plate, but none of these types of photography get to the heart of a photographer’s personal attachment to image-making (and this can include images derived from artificial means). The beating heart that encompasses the wondrous search, the exhilarating discovery, and the translation of this ephemera from the photographer to the world. Something is imprinted on the photographer during this process as well. 

One of the fundamental beliefs I have about photography is that, more so than the other plastic arts like painting or sculpture, it is a semi-autobiographical practice. What I mean by this is that a photographer’s entire body of work is as much about the photographer, and his or her life’s course, as it is about the things that they photographed. For example, if I were to take off in a hot air balloon from this spot and fly around the world in it taking pictures until I returned to this same spot, I could then say that I had photographed the whole world. But what I had really photographed was the narrow band that the balloon had flown over. A photographer’s entire oeuvre functions in this way; it is the culmination of individual decisions, opportunities, moments of happenstance and luck, personal predilections and biases, moods and motivations that together tell a story as much about the photographer as they do about their subjects. 

The next time that you go out to photograph, and if it is not too presumptuous a hope, as you continue in your practice beyond that, I want you to think about your photography in this way—that it is as personal and private to you as much as it is public to everyone you share it with. 

I will outline this concept further with three core admissions, prompts, assumptions, declarations—whatever you want to call them—that I hope are as useful to the reader as they are to me. 

When we first start out as photographers, this is one of the easiest concepts to grasp because our minds are so attuned to the task of learning, but as we gain experience, it can be harder and harder to achieve. Photography as meditation is the harmony achieved by being fully involved in your photography, while also open to its possibilities. It is a feeling of total concentration, combined with a loss of self-conscious trepidation. In psychology, this state is often described as “flow” or “flow state”, which was coined by Hungarian-American psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in his 1990 book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience.

To achieve meditation in photography, you don’t have to cross a sewer outflow on a barge chain (like I did in the image above), but I offer it because I have found myself more willing to overcome obstacles while in this state (usually self-consciousness, social anxiety, and other feelings of inadequacy). It is very likely that each reader, if a photographer, has some type of photography that they specialize in or are otherwise known for. This type of photography probably began for you because of some exhilaration or other positive feedback you received from doing it, but it may no longer stimulate you in that way. Practicing meditative photography can help you to reset this for yourself.

Here are my recommendations for meditative photography. Firstly, you can do this in your home, in your yard or in your neighborhood; feeling safe can help you to let go of your self-consciousness. Allow yourself to really see the space in a way that your familiarity may otherwise preclude you from doing. See the light, feel the weather on your skin, look at the objects around you not as what they are, but as how they can be organized within a frame. If you normally shoot wide, switch to a telephoto or a macro lens. Use an old camera or lenses. If you normally focus on story telling, concentrate on the abstract or formal qualities of the things around you. Repeat this until you feel the distractions of the world melt away and you are entirely in the experience of making pictures. This is the flow. 

During the Covid 19 shutdown, most of us experienced some additional levels of stress. For me personally, I threw my back out the weekend before the shutdown which limited my mobility for some time. Though the museum where I work had closed, the nature of my job meant that I was expected to work remotely, and in fact, my workload actually increased. My two boys also both needed to be homeschooled for the duration of the shutdown and began virtual learning once schools reopened. I needed an outlet for stress, but could not go anywhere, so I turned to photographing my immediate surroundings by trying to see this environment in new ways, by being present in the moment with the camera, and by unlocking my creativity to explore new pathways for expression.

One of the ways that I approached this was by shooting in black and white, which I almost never do. Most modern cameras have a monochrome or black and white mode, and I used this to help see the mundane things around me in new ways. By removing the distractions of color, I was able to focus on the other formal elements of a composition which led to experiments with abstraction or semi-abstraction. It was invigorating, and once I’d learned to unlock the flow for myself, the stresses of this highly unusual time melted away. The camera became an extension of my mind’s explorations; an ingredient in the experience of being both at peace and highly attuned. 

After my experiments in black and white, I began to consider how to reintroduce color to my almost daily experiments. One way that I went about this was to order an adapter that would allow an old bellows that I had to connect to my modern cameras. An entire world in miniature opened up for me to explore, starting first in the “field” of my backyard and later gravitating toward bringing the outdoors indoors to a tiny makeshift studio that my son and I used to investigate the machinations of process. This was a highly rewarding endeavor, especially for someone that does not even own a macro lens. 

From my experiments with the bellows, I started to adapt other old lenses from previous systems that I had laying around the house. I discovered the limitations or flaws in some of these lenses which I learned to anticipate and to then integrate into my picture making. 

Without some background introduction, the viewer would never know that these images were made right in the heart of the city, nor could they ever know the personal attachment that I have to them or the therapeutic nature of their creation. These are rewards for the photographer only—windows that peer into a more enlightened and perfected state of creativity.