It sometimes seems to me that photography has been hi-jacked, that both the professional practitioner, as the amateur, have been thrust into a world where a photograph isn't any longer just a photograph, a pretty (or otherwise) picture, but a portent, a harbinger of things to come, a poisoned dart dashing at speed to the bubble of self.
Why can't images simply be the way each person manages to do what he/she is trying to do? Why is it a required factor in the summation of an oeuvre that it be cut up, diagnosed by witch doctors and consequently consigned to a particular basket or drawer, never again free to be simply what it was as that button was pressed?
Thinking about this was started again, today, by the e-mail I received from a publisher punting a new book. I enclose a link to the item that caused me to write this note.
https://www.damianieditore.com/en-US/product/661One of the problems with this sort of written material is that it is infectious; it normalises its approach and many of us suddenly pause and realise that we, too, have been caught up in the game.
Sometimes I wonder whether it is an industry born but to perpetuate itself, or a true service to mankind. Jeanloup Sieff had his firm views on the matter, able to mock whilst managing both to enjoy and to use the benefits that the system could bestow once one was an accredited member deemed worthy of its attention.
Rob