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This is not the first time when I say this words. However, I decided to gather my thoughts in one and come up with the problem. And the problem is: the crucial moment in history of photography we are living these days: its end.
The conditions which arts must live in today are not promising, under my conviction. I really do believe the art is losing its battle with reality to face with. Adopting a political ideas, the world seems to support an utilitaristic way of being: what is good for the majority becomes the norm. As a not-supporter, to be euphemistic, of democracy, I can agree with the principle. How does the world of arts looks in my eyes then? Say, there is a large terrarium with hundreds of chameleons inside - how can you tell the one who didn’t change its colour and the rest adopted it? This is the art in our materialistic reality. There is a bunch of ‘artists’ which are supposed to represent something with their work. However, there are not many of them who really have a message to transmit to the world. Unfortunately, the tip of the iceberg they constitute, the real artistic world, is sinking, pulled by the chameleons that are not even intending but pretending to be the good ones. And it’s hard to tell one from another frequently.
I believe the reason why I see the state of reality this way is not that the art has decreased in sense of number of people interested in it. On the contrary, the amount of pseudo-artists increased tremendously last century. Due to progress which we like to see as our victory over the whole universe, God included; an apple of our eyes. You type in “how to be an artist” in search engine and you get the receipt. Thanks to the miracle of global communication everyone can be an artist or a specialist in whatever you like. Right… We are becoming so superficial that we will soon be able to compete with a sheets of paper: let’s see which one is flatter.
Photography, in particular, is endangered by some other factors. There are some chameleons too, of course. But the most worrying fact is the huge group of people who shoot photos like they were preparing breakfast. I mean, they don’t even consider photography as an art because they don’t bother themselves with considerations about art at all. As biologists would like all the world to be interested in their domain, sometimes I’d like all the world to be interested in what’s my domain. I know it is impossible and on the second thought I’m glad of world’s plurality. Nevertheless, I cannot accept the fact that the work photographers did and do is slowly becoming directed toward narrow group of recipients like magazines (I mean serious ones, not the glossies and the crap). Maybe I am too demanding, but isn’t the ignorance consuming us gradually? When I put them on the scales together - the ignorance and ‘chameleonism’ - the scales get crazy. I don’t know which one is worse.
But I do know which one is more dangerous. Art kept on surviving for such a long time with its fake side by side that it is impossible to give up now. Photography, then, will make it. But I am afraid it may be lost among the sea of so-called-photography that consists in ’shooting pictures’ and not ‘creating an art’. And its the photography itself that helped it happen. The evolution - or revolution (?) - of digital technologies, the one of the aspects of transforming the world into a global village, implanted in imaging lead to what is happening.
Is it possible that the real photography is maybe not dying, but somehow decreasing into ghetto, a niche for outcasts? No. I would rather say ‘the chosen ones’.