Good news bad news

The photograph is dead; long live photography.

Sorry for the melodrama. I like to exaggerate, but this isn't an exaggeration: there's a lot of worry and chatter these days about what's happening to our sacred domain. In fact, the anxiety is so thick you can shoot it at 1/15th of a second and still catch it clearly.

Last week, the New York Times spelled it like this: For Photographers, the Image of a Shrinking Path. (Karen d'Silva, an industry guru, wrote in an email: "It's crazy how many people sent me this article. Very telling.")

Blogs everywhere record the hubbub, including this post by Shannon Fagan for Ellen Boughn a few weeks ago, a post that generated more than a hundred frantic replies.

And on the APA listserve conversation yesterday, a fellow member asked us if anyone, anywhere, had any good news to report.

I could go on and on in this vein (just one more: at the SPE national convention last month, an industry executive told a conference hall of university educators that we faced dire consequences — armageddon, I think he called it — if we closed up our wet darkrooms in favor of digital labs).

The bottom line fundamental is that the ground is changing in photographic practice. Yes, but this change, no matter how threatening it might seem, is an amazing opportunity for all of us.

This is the message we should focus on. But unfortunately, the optimism that this opportunity should be generating is getting crushed by the weight of anxiety. As an educator (I might add, as a passionate educator), this state of affairs troubles me. And as you know if you've worked with me, I have a lot to say about it!






I'll keep it brief, for now, but might I suggest a simple change of preposition?

From the perspective of my years in the commercial world (with strong corroboration from my journeys in the land of art), this is what I've learned: no one gets paid for taking a picture of anything. Rather, the focus is the purpose, the reason, on what the photograph is for.

This is crucial, and just might help turn attention away from the tools, techniques and structures of the industry, and put the focus back on the core of what we're doing. Why'd you get into photography in the first place?

Students at the beginning of this journey have no trouble answering that question: to tell a story, to share a point of view, to explore an emotion. It's later, as school starts to come to a close, and the looming reality of paying one's own rent starts to weigh more heavily — that's when our conversations begin to shift.

I wish I could stop this from happening (or, at least, to stop it from happening in such a negative way). But lately, alone, mostly, in the seminar room, it feels more and more impossible, especially with the yelping din seeping in from all around us.

So this is a plea — c'mon, folks, let's stop the whining and wake up. Pictures, lens-based pictures, are just as powerful as they ever have been. Yes, a lot of things have changed, and continue to change, but when have they ever not been changing?

For my commercial comrades, the threat appears to be a market turned sour and rebellious. For my partners in art, the troubles seem to have a similar genesis though with a different flavor of bitter. And for my students, for everyone's students, the purpose and promise of a photographic life feels up for grabs, and potentially pointless. Which is the true problem.

Let's get back to what we want our pictures to be remembered for.  Our audiences aren't going to wait around for us. We might need to learn some new skills to continue reaching them, and re-tool our mindset to stay relevant, but if we let them get over the horizon while we keep complaining that they're leaving us, we'll truly lose our footing.







We have so many resources to help us make this transition. We've all got our blog rolls (mine is just off to the left, if a pointer is in order), and our favorite gallery guides. As well, I strongly recommend getting involved with your community photo center or non-profit — they're in every region of the country: En Foco, Houston Center for Photography, Light Work, Boston PRC, to name just a measly few (too many to list here!).

In class we talk about it all the time: we're each responsible for our own inspiration.

For a truly great fire-up and get-along-now point of view, check in with Brian Storm, or sign up for a mind-blowing out of town excursion with Salaam Garage. The tunes are changing but the song feels similar, and it remains.

And this morning on the APA conversation, folks are chatting about reasons to hope.









All photos © 2010 Sean Justice