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November 18, 2009
The arrival of the digital camera, computers and digital storage, cameras in mobile phones and access to broadband in the 1990s means that we are all photographers now and that we have a broad virtual audience.
Gary Sauer-Thompson, rain +rose, Solway, Encounter Bay, 2009
But we are in the process of becoming different kinds of photographers. Daniel Rubinstein and Katrina Sluis in 'A Life More Photographic' in Photographies say that:
The arrival of digital imaging did not revolutionize popular photography but caused gradual shifts in the habits of hobbyists and middle-class amateurs who bought computers, scanners and ink-jet printers but used them within the old paradigms of analogue photography. The photographic darkroom and the photo lab were replaced by Photoshop and a colour printer. The ability to make prints without the need for a home darkroom, and the ease with which old, faded prints could be improved or restored convinced many photographers to swap the photo lab for domestic digitalset-up.The ability to make prints without the need for a home darkroom, and the ease with which old, faded prints could be improved or restored convinced many photographers to swap the photo lab for domestic digital set-up.
The subsequent shift from print to screen based photography signifies a shift in photographic culture.
Some argue that:
amateurs have the ability to see through the dominant paradigms, are freer to recombine elements of paradigms thought long dead, and can apply everyday life experience to their deliberations. Most importantly, however, amateurs are not invested in institutionalized systems of knowledge production and policy construction, and hence do not have irresistible forces guiding the outcome of their process such as maintaining a place in the funding hierarchy, or maintaining prestige-capital.
However, the attempt to be “freer” from such forces by situating ourselves outside professions and institutions can lead to us being recuperated by them without being aware of it. Practice can often be quite conservative --eg., Flickr's bias towards sunsets, flowers and pets.
The creative industries often encourage artists to view themselves as cultural entrepreneurs managing their creative talents, personal lives and professional identities in ways that maximise their capacity to achieve financial gain, personal satisfaction and have fun.Consumers are rebranded as creative by the digital lifestyle and technology industry.
According to Rubinstein and Sluis what has facilitated this shift in photographic culture from print to screen is the rebranding of the computer as the centre of the digital lifestyle by Apple. photography is incorporated into the suite of friendly multimedia applications designed to appeal to every computer user and downplay the references to craftsmanship and specialist knowledge. The photograph that occupied the mind of Barthes --a printed snap shot-- is a different object to the photograph created today as image data, stored within a data base (Flickr) and incorporated into social networking and sharing experiences. Our attention shifts from the singular photographic image to image sequences: the ‘‘photostream’ in which the image is presented as a shifting sequence or flow of images.
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