Image As Container, Süddeutsche Zeitung

 


deployment is ubiquitous, in turn, changing the society that uses those images. It is, therefore, a good time to re-evaluate the way that history has looked at images and the way images —including photographs— function.

Photography has operated in many ways and for many purposes. It functioned as a personal reference point, as an investigative scientific tool, as evidence, as fine art, as an implement to propagandize aspects of culture through forms of advertising for corporate gain, political gain and for social status. Just as a piece of text can be a traffic sign, a bible, a love letter, a piece of literature, a political declaration, a scientific paper, a philosophical treatise, a rant of the sane or insane—a photograph lives and dies depending how we see it, use it and appreciate it. Now, changes in culture and the technology that disseminates culture, makes the importance of traditionally printed materials, like books and magazines and the advertisements they contain, less clear. Transient, fluid, digital cultural signs and signals are now overtaking traditionally “slower” media. The role of galleries and museums are shifting as well, as audiences grow larger and look to be entertained whilst being edified. The concomitant economics of the image industry, caught up in these transformations, invites greater change to the technologies of image creation and distribution, further increasing the presence of fluid, digitalized images in our everyday lives.

Since photography’s inception, there have been taste-makers and gatekeepers who have controlled the context in which photographs appeared. They dictated how and if an image was seen or used. They controlled the conversation. Photography has been traditionally a profession controlled by regulators of some sort—the professional photographer, the editor, the critic, the gallery director, the historian, the creative director, the curator, the designer—all professionals working to control and delimit the ways and means by which the image was created, edited, distributed, seen and understood. They chose, and for the most part, the audience followed, many times raising the level of discourse by honing a way of seeing by an audience, even when pandering to particular clientele. But access to their cabal was limited. Today, the technologies of mass creation and distribution are shifting power away from the professional classes; but what will the non-
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professionals do with these new powers they don’t even know they possess—are we to become gatekeepers all, as we vote with our eyes? Here we are entering into new territories of culture: organic and Darwinian. But we also must remember: in the current capitalistic-fascistic environment, images function mostly to sell something, whether it is a perfume, or the fact that I fit in somehow, like the truth that I too had a pony ride when I was three.

It is therefore uncertain where photography is going in these heady times. What is increasingly evident is that the masses, aided by technological leaps, are creating new realities “on the ground.” We are entering a new era of image making where, contrary to Garry Winogrand’s understanding of the photograph qua photograph, or Diane Arbus’ image pointing us to the mysteries of understanding, we are fed an increasing flood of naïve images that generally, simply, point to the world at large.

Link to original published excerpt (in German).

Link to other reviews and articles.

Link to sample image spreads from the book.