Last week I was involved in the first Ignite09. Full of awenessness but a lot harder than I thought. For those interested, not there or there, you have the video, the slides and the text version (had I been a little bit more focused, this is what I would have said in five minutes.)
Why Photography Defines Our World by Melissa McVeigh – Ignite London 18 November 2009 from hurryonhome on Vimeo.
‘So successful has been the camera roles in beautifying the world that photographs, rather than the world, have become the standard of the beautiful.’ Susan Sontag in On Photography.
In some creative disciplines we spend a lot of time thinking about the written word, messaging, brand it’s tone of voice and it’s meaning. But increasingly, I would argue we don’t apply the same rigor to selecting photography as part of the creative mix.
The time it takes to read this statement (Slide 2), think about its context and make a judgment on the facts, a photo of the same thing can be interpreted immediately and instantly understood.
I think we underestimate the linguistics of visual language – it’s ability to mark time but also define it. A single image can become a symbol for a moment and put all of its history – part, present and future into a moment.
We all know that photography can be powerful, it can galvanise a people to take a stand, encourage change, it can force us to improve, and can challenge our notions of right and wrong.
If I mention events, like Neva being killed in Iran, or the moon landing, or the Vietnam war, we all probably in our heads think of the same photograph.
The event is remembered and then retold in the context of those images. Over time they also evolve into their own extended narratives.
It’s power may be obvious, we all take pictures, we are all photographers, but my argument is that it has been devalued, commoditised and the craft and the idea of telling a storytelling in some circles has been forgotten.
What do I mean by that? We don’t take the production of meaning seriously and use pictures with less fluency and purpose than earlier generations of photographers, designers and editors. Photography often serves to illustrate a point, celebrity worship, information, fashion, buy stuff, a visual marker rather than embellishing or telling it’s own story.
So, if quantity is the decisive factor, we live in a great age of photography. It has never been easier to take a picture and everyone is doing it. Digital changed everything. The cost to process images has been removed, technology has made everyone a photographer.
We are surrounded by images, deluged by them. They are just the images we see everyday, they have become an unquestioned part of our visual memory. But they are glyphs we read superficially and instantaneously.
But the current age of photography is mediocre and formulaic. The problem lies in how it is used. We take so many, we record every event, we delete instantly any image we don’t like. We have lost faith and sight in the power in the photo to express anything other than our personal reality.
Broadly speaking, (and I say broad) designers have contributed to a decline in standards through ignorance. There is good reason to doubt that many art directors, designers, have any deep understanding of photography’s possibilities as a documentary and narrative based medium. Little more than an afterthought. Too easy to use istockphoto and other quick, instant, low-cost and readily available photo libraries.
But photography has just become a mere snapshot. The clipart of the 00′s.
Design tends to focus, on design, pattern, form and forget that visual / image content needs to be considered. I say this because as part of this research I learnt that in contemporary manuals on graphic design, photography is often relegated to a small section at the back or a paragraph. In previous generations there were chapters devoted to visual design, photography and narrative.
But photographs are powerful artifacts. We see certain pictures as realistic portrayals of the world, and pictures can in turn influence the way we perceive reality. We learn to see ourselves photographically: to regard oneself as attractive is, precisely to judge that one would look good in a photograph. Images construct our notion of beauty. They promote role models in society, highlight what is acceptable, fashionable and not. The style of photography may change over time, but in each case it still maintains a benchmark by which others live.
Snapping pictures has become a daily activity for many particularly the young. Instantly forgettable, deletable. The result is a different kind of photographic literacy – more people, taking more pictures than ever yet a feeling that the individual picture particularly the well taken picture, counts for less than it did.
There is nothing wrong with a good snapshot – I love them, don’t get me wrong. All I ask as someone who cares about photography, if you don’t already care a little bit more – to think about photographs, think about the stories they tell in any format, any quality and use them a little bit more smartly.
Tags: ignite09, photography
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