For a media arts assignment I'm doing an essay on how photography is viewed in the immediate community. I would appreciate any responses to the question "How do you see photography in the 90s?" Thanks

-- Sonillion (sonnilion@hotmail.com), September 17, 1999

Answers

I'm not sure what you're looking for, nor who the "immediate community" is. Anyway, there was a time when the word "radio" generated excitement. It was new and there was much interest. Content was important, but the mere fact that it came over the "wireless" made it urgent and exciting. Today you say radio and everyone knows what you mean and the conversation goes to content. Photography has now reached that point. For other than photographers, the general public is so saturated with visual images, that photography as a topic or technique generates very little interest. Look at Kodak trying to make a profit in competition with Fuji and others. The margins are gone because photography is a commodity item. Sure, people still take snapshots, but the act doesn't have nearly the significance that it did up to maybe the '70s. The digitization of photography will affect it in ways we can't predict. I know quite a few people, many of them strong technical people whom you might think would be interested in photography. Not a one is. We used to have many camera stores here (Rochester, NY) with darkroom equipment and a good selection of everything else. Now we have maybe three, and some chain stores that sell point & shoots. My couple friends that thought maybe they'd like an SLR took one look at the prices and lost all interest. Though I still enjoy photography greatly, it doesn't seem to be a growing hobby; no more so than scratch building radios!

-- Conrad Hoffman (choffman@rpa.net), September 17, 1999.

What's the difference if it's the "immediate community" or the "unimmediate community"? The photography from now on will be digital and colorful, and folks like me put out to pasture in my little ol' black & white darkroom. I mean, trays to develop a print, what's that all about?

-- John L. Blue (bluescreek@hotmail.com), September 17, 1999.

http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-new-answers.tcl?topic=Philosop hy%20of%20Photography

Try this Philosophy of Photography forum and you may get a lot of answers, e.g. on the death of street photography.

-- Lot (lotw@wxs.nl), September 18, 1999.

It's funny you ask. After 21 years as a photojournalist a few months ago I left the newspaper business and became a "digital imaging specialist". I'm afraid that is what's happening to photography. Silver is being left behind and most everything is becoming digital. I don't think that is good for photography. But like I had to change to advance, I suppose Kodak and the others have to change too. I don't think digital photography is taken as seriously as silver. It's too easy to leave it behind. You don't have that negative. I seem to be rambling, but I hope you get my drift.

-- Joe Cole (jcole@apha.com), September 21, 1999.

It will become digital because it's quick and film less. Silk flowers are plastic flowers, Credit Cards are plastic money, Fast food is like plastic food, and common digital will be the plastic pictures of the future. A lower form of APS. Made in a cheep way with little thought to become the cheep pictures to be webed or put on the fridge. I think I will try the REAL also.

-- Andy Clements (a_clements2@juno.com), September 24, 1999.

All that has changed in the 90s is the quality of the image making material. The images are the same as they were in the days when you took the lens cap off and counted to 20. Some good some fair and a few great.

-- Larrye Edye (WA4GMS@webtv.net), September 28, 1999.

I am not all that sure about the digital tsunami overpowering traditional processes. As long as someone still makes film, someone will still buy it. As long as someone still buys film, someone will make it. The Daguerrian Society and wet-plate practitioners, although far from world dominating, have managed to pursue their interests independent of Big Yellow and Fuji.

Look at the upsurge in interest in large format and super large format. Alternative processes are undergoing a renaissance too, cyanotype kits, the re-emergence of pre-coated platinum paper, etc.

Museums and other archivally interested types would be wise to continue to shoot on film and scan the negative, rather than rely on digital files which somehow have managed to avoid the standardization of the video image.

On the artistic front, it's interesting to see that "pictorialis" has made a come back. Folks have realized that there should be no rules in art and that manipulation of any kind is acceptable and just as valid as the "straight" approach.

The surge of interest in photography starting in the 60's with it being taught at the college level and with print prices rising....

What are the negative effects of that? In other words, by legitimizing it, has photography suffered a bit? Could it be argued that when it was a craft and profession that the quality, not the quantity of work produced was greater?

I'm not an unrealistic optomist, just pointing out that for every major culture, there's a counter-culture.

-- Sean yates (yatescats@yahoo.com), September 29, 1999.

an I don't spell tew gud neethur.

-- Sean yates (yatescats@yahoo.com), October 01, 1999.