The sky is falling!!! We've all become bored, or at least uninspired by photography now.... But have we really? Or is it something else bugging us altogether?

 The photo above was made this morning as I walked around photographing in a way that's both a throwback but mostly different for me. I was using a rangefinder camera (not so surprising) but instead of a 50mm lens I was using a 35mm Carl Zeiss ZM lens. And instead of looking through a +2.0 diopter into the camera's optical finder I was zone focusing and using a Zeiss 35mm bright line finder mounted in the camera's hot shoe. It was just different enough to make my morning 10% more fun. And I like the clear vision provided by the single optical finder and its frame lines. 

Getting older. Staying interested (in just about anything artsy) means not just making the art but also sharing the art. An intentional art project, by its very nature, asks for the act of sharing with people you know and even people you don't know. But whether or not the audience is one billion or only ten it's the feeling of people being included in your appreciation of what you've created. The numbers are meaningless unless your main aim is monetizing the work. Getting paid for it in money instead of feedback from family, friends and whatever social infrastructure you've taken the time to create. That your work isn't seen by millions on TikTok doesn't say anything new about how most of us have always experienced making and sharing art. We're like a series of little ponds and we drop in our artwork and marvel at the travel of the concentric circles. If we're lucky.

Intimate relationships between fellow artists and their audiences haven't evolved out of a need for convenience or efficiency but thrive on the treasures of mutual support, which lifts every person, every artist up. The most important first circle of my concentric rings of connection and sharing are with the love of my life --- who is also an artist. We look at art, talk about art, make art and share it at the very basic levels with each other. Without a close partner support for your expression is more fragmented. More steps removed from its creation. Iffy. In fact, the isolation of working without emotional support for your personal work is injurious to one's mental health.

Most of the time, when I hear that someone has lost their drive to create (or even appreciate) their art or craft what I hear most strongly is that they've lost the audience with which they can share their most basic work and expression. Their art. 

We deserve closeness for many reasons but sharing our thoughts, our wishes and our inspirations are among the most important benefits of primary relationships. Everything flows outward from there. 

When we hit a certain age mortality unmoors us from relationships. It's relentless. Some ties can never be replaced but new relationships can be fostered and grown. It's like everything else in life. Making friends, and even closer relationships, isn't "free" it takes effort and intention and more effort. But in the long run..... at least until death.....it does pay off. 

Some people who feel like they've lost their inspiration for an art they've long pursued ask the question: Where is the art I loved heading? Or, to stay on our basic topic here, Where is Photography headed?

I hate to tell them but it's headed to where  it's always been. While so much press is aimed at new technology and new gear and sneaky A.I. stuff I think Photography is the same as it's always been. For most people who make photographs it's always been a personal pursuit. The work means more to families and friends --- like it always has. I'd venture to say that people continue to proceed as they always have. Making photos that make them happy. And sharing them with family, friends and a local community of like-minded fellow photographers. That's also what's mostly happening on sites like Facebook and Instagram. In the film days there were printed magazines. They've been replaced by websites, blogs and Youtube/TikTok videos. But we're still building our own small communities and sharing the work we always shared we're just doing it on a different medium.

When people get upset and feel lost in a never ending sea of images I think what we're really seeing is the bitterness that seems to always accompany the falling of barriers to entry which, when still erect, served to offer many benefits to those who could afford the ticket prices to join the exclusive club. The time and self-indulgence of the things like the prerequisite four year liberal arts, university degree, the access of rich upper middle class leisure that allowed for access to tastemakers and benighted a lucky few who had access, created by privilege of being born into a situation of both access to gear, knowledge and the leisure time to blend it all, the ability to kneel before the curator kings and, once touched by the swords of acceptance were invited in, regardless of any real talent, to feast at the communal trough that came along with de facto membership. And we felt more....special.

The trappings of film photographers who felt smugly ensconced in the tribe were available to those who could afford better cameras than the mass market consumer cameras, had the space and resources to put together darkrooms, could afford mentors to show them how to print and what to print and much more. These were the resources that reinforced barriers to entry for the vast majority of people who might have had the talent but not the time, money and entree to become photographic artists. 

And even if we never entered the kingdoms of Szarkowski and the other regale gatekeepers to the inner circles of the photographic art industry/academia once we understood the secret handshakes (Leica, Hasselblad, Linhof + Sodium vapor safelights and much more...) we could proceed to make bank as teachers, "curator "approved" magazine photographers, magazine editors, workshop instructors, gallery workers/owners and all the other effete workers who inhabited our craft industry. One of the most sought after situations for wannabe, inner circle photographers was always the position of being a tenured professor at a big university. The privilege remained, usually, long after the talent had left the building...

When the barriers fell a certain segment of photographers and other industry workers refused to evolve or even attempt to understand the new tools, styles and equipment and embrace what photography continues to become. Instead they became pissed off and endlessly whine that things were so much better behind the palace walls of the photo empire. We all did stuff in the accepted fashion and we all pretended to appreciate the same "great" photographic artists...like Alec Soth or Stephen Shore...

We never had thoughts or considerations for those who got along, created, grew and worked outside the walls. That they may have a different approach or an appreciation for different looks, styles and concepts didn't matter to us because these folks were "doing it wrong" And they were working on their ideas of photography outside the pampered largess of the academy. 

They labor without the protective walls of wealth, privilege, educational connections, the leisure and resources to make photo art in a traditional, print oriented, gallery showing way. They've skirted the idea that it has to be all about the print!!!! and have been successful creating and sharing in a digital environment. 

In an eery sense the people who pine for the earlier days, complete with barriers to entry and a cult-like sharing of tastes and prerequisites, feels almost like the political divide in America today with a cohort of traditional, workers and rural inhabitants who can't accept that the job markets changed and the markets are not going back. Now people who thought they had "jobs for life" feel betrayed and angry when they find this economy has made some profound shifts. And that they have been left behind. Now, instead of embracing change and learning how to exist in the single most vibrant and rich economy in all of recorded history they want to dig in their heels, blame the people whom they must now FAIRLY compete with and instead find "leaders" who promise to turn back the clocks and return to them largely unearned privileges. 

In our field, one of the current "enemies" that the recent "Falling Barriers Victims" of photography are railing against is artificial intelligence because it is "untruthful." but photographers around the world have been productively and profitably able to leverage a number of A.I. tools to enhance and improve their work or to bring to life art that was impossible to make before. They are working in ways that are outside "whole cloth" image creation and are instead making new variants using analogous new tools to mimic the tools commercial and art photographers have used since the days of PhotoShop. Even in the era pre-digital camera. A.I. isn't always about making things up from scratch, in fact, in most applications it just enhances tools that are already in existence and makes them more precise and makes the processes more efficient ...... and accessible.... which the old guard seems to hate. 

Basic things like: 

Subject selection

Hair selection

Keystone corrections

Vignetting corrections

Facial retouching 

Image resizing for high res files

Advanced noise reduction

And hundreds more features and improvements I haven't even gotten around to trying. Faster---easier--but in the end just an improvement on efficiency and the quality of results we already wanted. The photo is closer now to what we desired it to be in the first place. Does it really matter how it got there?

I saw two photo exhibits last week. John Baldesari's work at the McNay Museum of Art and Ansel Adams at the Humanities Research Center at UT. I also saw, within a larger show, work by National Geographic photographer, Greg Davis at the West Chelsea Contemporary Gallery here in Austin. 

All were good. All were different. The big takeaway? Each pursued constant evolution and constant change. None were obsessed with objective truth as an underpinning to their art. The underlying argument --- the honest story --- is that the people who are becoming disengaged from a photographic practice are actually mourning their loss of stature as experts, their loss of largely unearned privileges and their largely exclusive membership in a club, the unchanging rules of which they learned, memorized, embraced, and set in stone. But how much of the embrace is founded on a true love of making their own work and sharing it in that way and how much is really the pain of losing their prerequisite membership in a club that's quickly fading away? Can allegiance to the rote but unintentional practice of rituals, the value of which has largely vanished, be the true point of resignation for some who've professed to have lost their mojo?  

The old work has little or no relevance to a new generation of very motivated and very talented photographers. It's largely being relegated to being an historic footnote, a nod to a time fabricated three or four generations ago. 

The ICP membership, the old books from the 1980s about the "100 greatest photographers", the Saunders four bladed easel, the black and white viewing filter and the perfectly fixed black and white print are no longer enough to spark interest in a vast section of now rising photographers. Everyone has moved on. 

No one has to change or become a digital expert. The real joy of making and enjoying any kind of photography has not changed. Only our perceptions, driven by the outside media we insist on consuming, make us feel that we have to either change to or denounce current photographic trends and styles. If you love making palladium prints you are most welcome to continue to enjoy the process. Ditto with 8x10 contact prints on juicy paper. Just don't expect that you'll convince the rest of the world to follow along. It's not a requirement. 

We see more photographic images than we ever imagined possible. Is this spate of unhappiness really just a function of looking outward and being overwhelmed by the near infinite supply instead of looking in and finding (and sharing ) the things you enjoy? Without the need to judge...

Just a few thoughts as I was walking around today. Glad I made a few notes.