There are still pioneers...you know, the ones that receive chuckles and the wrath of many. For their work is "odd" and not understood.
Not all work that is "odd" and mis understood will qualify as genius, for alas most is junk.
It's very hard to pioneer in this world where we are bombarded by so many "nice" images. And we all make them.
Peter
That's the problem: it overwhelms everything else because the means of projection to the world market are controlled by vested interests that push, promote and deify those it believes will bring profit. It's no good quoting the Internet as a secondary outlet to fame and fortune: what goes there is also drowned or at the very least swept along in the sludge that seeps downhill to the final swamp. People demand taste-definers, as they do personal shoppers. (I wonder if one of those has ever brought back an invisible, empress dress for madam to try?)
It all leads back to the idea of the golden photographic age, which despìte the claims of many to the contrary, I firmly do believe did exist; it worked for me, as for many more at a much higher and shiny level than to which I ever clambered.
To understand all of this properly, you have to have at least one of the two following qualities: have worked in the medium during that time, or have worked in the selling side of it. As most things require a definition in order to be understood, or at least for the thing under discussion to be understood for what it is, rather than confused with some other, external interpretation of what the writer means, let me try to define my meaning of the golden age of photography this way: it is the period, from just before WW2 until around the late 80s when the advent of digital cameras began to impact the world of cameras, materials and photographer expectations.
During that period, the magazines that were still able to print through the war (UK Vogue, for one), were producing "pioneering" work in fashion; post-war fashion, reportage and general advertising photography on billboards was becoming more creative than ever it had been. Immediately post-war, the world renewal brought an explosion of print as it did of reconstruction of damaged buildings, bombed factories and construction of entirely new ones; cars became more widely available to normal people, catching up with the US, and a positive creative air was to be smelled and enjoyed, even as many factories were being hindered and finally ruined by communist-run unions that were quite divorced from the majority of members, most of whom had no option but to join such unions if they wanted a job. (I spent four years on the "shop floor" in a very modern engineering group and nobody anywhere needs try to correct me on my impressions on labour relations and union power: I was there, lived it, suffered parts of it and eventually escaped.)
Come the Sixties, and things in the commercial creative arts jumped into overdrive. Even up in Scotland, four hundred-plus long road miles from Swingin' London, there existed a "scene", as it did in Manchester, with models agencies springing up, and work around for those who really did search and could produce, rather than sit at home, moan and do nothing. Camera shops were plentiful, and even remote Glasgow boasted Hasselblad and Leica
specialists and Nikons were almost all available from stock. The photo world was in good health. I sometimes used a Glasgow E6 processing company (MNS, I think was its name) where two of the young owners owned Ferraris; one red and one blue. GP studios were also flourishing in the city. I think not a one of them exists today as a photographic studio. This flourishing outburst of optimism was there, despite the political bleakness and mismanagement from a succession of political parties: the artistic human spirit seemed to be able to ride above it all and keep on hoping, wishing and making it real. If you went on holiday or on a photo-shoot that needed a Heathrow connection, the airport looked like a convention centre for models and photographers: people were all on the move to or from somewhere. (I have kept away from airports now for years; perhaps younger versions of those intrepìd groups of professional camera-clicking people are still there today?)
I don't sense much of that optimism around from many I meet or correspond with today; the only happy snappers I know are true amateurs. For them, any age where cameras of one kind or another exist can be a golden one. Big difference, both in attitude and of expectation.
