The future photograph

[Ed. note: My colleague Benedict’s great post on photo volume growth encouraged me to dig up the following from my drafts folder, although I disagree with his provocative conclusion.]

When an expensive thing becomes free, new behaviors emerge. When a private thing becomes public, new behaviors emerge. Below, some thoughts on the swirling cloud of photographs that we are creating together.

1. We are in the middle of a redefinition of what constituents value in a photograph. On one hand, photographs are cheaper, which should lower the received value necessary to justify the taking of the photograph. On the other hand, abundance creates scarcity of attention and we now have always-on instant access to the best photographs, which devalues the amateur. Going forward, personal photographs will have two purposes: 1) memory of personal circumstance and 2) personal expression. What kinds of photographs will be taken when we have perfect information? The future photographer will ask themselves, what are the odds that this picture, but better, doesn’t exist already?
2. Selfies take a timeless outlet of self-expression (the self-portrait) and combines it with the fact that our self-representations have become a stream of cheap, shared updates. The selfie is a way to share what you are feeling, doing and seeing at this very moment: a much higher fidelity version of an emoji. I am very long (and encouraged by) the selfie.
3. Photos now have four distinct kinds of ownership: photographer, file owner, publisher and subject. While this was technically true before the smartphone camera, the decreased cost of publication puts new power in the hands of the publisher, and the subject loses. This tension between subject and publisher is largely responsible for the rise of Snapchat (where subject and publisher are often the same person.)
4. The camera is the most creative sensor on the smartphone because it is the easiest to create with. It is easy to create with because you start with the world as your raw material instead of a white screen, and because clever software makers (Instagram) have realized that gentle abstraction (filters) can obscure our own poor taste. It has long been easier to be a photographer than a painter, because the worst case in photography is at least something.