> From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of > Bruce Walker > > A sobering essay to ponder: > > "As far as I can see — admittedly from ground level — there are two > possible effects on “serious” photography. > > 1. The flowering of photographers leads to millions of people who are > thinking more visually and whom we may be able to entice to become an > audience for documentary and photojournalistic images. > > 2. We are bombarded with so much visual stimuli via the Web and social > media that it becomes almost impossible to rise above the flood of > images. And if everyone likes everything, no one photograph is better > than another." > > http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/07/in-an-age-of-likes- > commonplace-images-prevail/ >
The situation is not so different from writing. There are probably more literate people in the world than there are people with cameras, and billions of emails are written every day - mostly on the PDML, it seems - yet somehow good writers still come to the fore. I see no reason for photography to be significantly different, and don't see why it should claim any special status. The blogger claims "The question is: How does the photographic community harness this explosion of visual energy to expand its audience? This is what needs to be focused on." Yet he does not explain why this needs to be focused on. People who want to be 'literate' photographers will take photographs which appeal to that audience. Most people do not want to be literate photographers, just as most writers of emails and postcards don't want to be literary novelists or magazine writers. B -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
