The writer of the article shows his own biases in the following statement: "Photography can easily degenerate into a pseudo-art, with millions of people all taking pictures of the same things and all thinking we are special.
This amateur delusion of photographic art is everywhere today – from Instagramto the streets and hills, where there is always someone taking their holiday snaps too damn seriously. This strange plagiarism row exposes the illusion on which today’s mass camera cult rests. Both these amateur photographers were convinced their creativity was special. The truth is that words like creativity, individuality, talent and originality don’t readily apply when you have a planet of people all taking photos." Anytime someone purports to know what anybody is thinking (let alone "millions of people" are thinking) you either have a serious God Complex or they are revealing more about their own motivations. Forget the argument regarding whether photography is an art or a craft. Even a single photographer can have different motivations for creating images. I doubt that many of us aspire to be thought of as the most special photographer on the planet. This guy's idea of "special" is rather extreme also. Switch the topic from photography to the culinary arts. Lots of people have made a souffle in the world. But one still feels a sense of accomplishment when one does it for themselves. It really doesn't matter how many other people have done it before, or even done it better. We are satisified to create a souffle that pleases our intended audience, whether that be ourselves alone or those invited to the dinner party. If there is an element of feeling special about that (otherwise known as taking a certain pride in one's accomplishments, who is anyone else to care?) Who is anyone else to take you to task or feel it is their job to knock you down a few pegs? The author uses loaded language like "cult" in describing photographers as well. He paints with not just a broad brush, but a very broad ROLLER. I would suggest that the author is probably a failed or frustrated photographer himself. Or maybe he simply has a personality disorder. At the very least he is not capable of very abstract thought to distill all photographers in the world down to a single "cult" entity as he has. He also uses a very specific situation that does not really illustrate the way most photographs are made. The iceberg photographers did not have the luxury of selecting a radically different perspective of the subject as you would in a normal situation (unless they wanted to show that they were on a ship and put something in the foreground). So of course their images were the same. They could not choose to move closer or farther away. Getting low to the ground or higher would not change the resulting image much. But most photographs do not have these limitations. They are not taken by multiple people from exactly the same perspective at the exact same time/date in exactly the same light (etc.) So he uses a very specific case in a misguided attempt to draw larger conclusions. In any event, EVEN if everyone on that ship took the exact same photo, they probably did so to record the memory, to share with their family & friends back home. To possibly make a print for the wall. Is the writer suggesting that only ONE of those people had the right to create a "special" image? Even if we accepted that there was a component of "feeling special" to the act, does that make it wrong. They probably were privileged in some way to be on vacation, to be on that cruise, to be there to see that iceberg. They ARE probably "special", in that regard, in their circle of friends, family, or associates. No not special in the UNIVERSE or in the WORLD, but they don't have the same scope of friends, relatives & associates as the other people on that cruise. They all were special in a way. The writer has a job to do. He has a beast he needs to feed. That requires him to pound out articles on SOMETHING. He doesn't have to make sense or coherent arguments. He just needs to get eyeballs to read his stuff so that he can justify getting paid to write more in the future. In a sense, he probably tries to be incendiary. People getting mad and discussing his stuff proves that he's gotten those eyeballs. <rant off> On Wed, Feb 4, 2015 at 10:25 AM, Igor PDML-StR <pdml...@komkon.org> wrote: > > Here is an article in The Guardian: > http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2015/feb/03/instagram-generation-amateur-photographers-art-plagiarism > > While the article raises some interesting questions, I disagree with some of > the statements the author makes. E.g. he suggests that you cannot "take > really great pictures" on a cruise. And that's because more than one person > can take similar pictures there. > That's total nonsense! > He also implies that ones there is a view, different photographers are bound > to take similar photo (unlike artists, who are bound to paint different > paintings). > > If I were to translate that to a different setting: people will not get > "really great pictures" at GFM, because they all see the same wonderfully > looking views. > > I wonder what other PDMLers think about this... > > Igor > > > -- > PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List > PDML@pdml.net > http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net > to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and > follow the directions. -- Life is too short to put up with bad bokeh. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
