Lost in a sea of garbage.

Over nine years ago I wrote that photojournalism, as a profession, was dead. The iPhone killed it. Everyone is now a putative photojournalist and he will be at the scene well before the pro with his kit bag and boarding pass. You can read that piece here.

Now with online services where you post an image which promptly disappears, where everyone is a photographer, it’s not irrational to state that photography as a whole is over.

By that I mean the well composed, considered image, objects arranged in the frame just so in the interest of the best dynamic.

Film director Wim Wenders states it well:

“It’s not just the meaning of the image that has changed, it’s that the act of looking does not have the same meaning. Now, it’s about showing, sending and maybe remembering. It is no longer essentially about the image. The image for me was always linked to the idea of uniqueness, to a frame and to composition. You produced something that was, in itself, a singular moment. As such, it had a certain sacredness. That whole notion is gone.”

You can read the interview in The Guardian here.

The art and artifice of making a great image are no more.

In the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 1973. Leica M3, 50mm Summicron, TriX. I spent many happy hours here in my youth.