Falling attention spans and video are the cause.
When I was a teenager gazing at photographs some forty years ago, the ‘Great Photographers’ I knew then pretty much remain the ‘Great Photographers’ I know today.
If you want to know their names, just click on Book Reviews and many of those profiled fall in the list. Cartier-Bressson, Sudek, Callahan, Evans, Capa, Ray Jones, Frank, Snowdon, Erwitt, Brandt, Brassai, Kertesz, Penn, Avedon, Porter, Beaton, Blumenfeld. The list is not long. You could add maybe another dozen names and the whole collection would represent 90% of content in photography shows in art galleries and museums.
Journalists do not feature in this list. They never will. Capa comes closest to that description but his pictures transcend journalism and become works of great humanism. Of the other well known photojournalists they are, for the most part, One Shot Wonders. Most remember the picture of the Viet Cong being shot in the head by the Vietnamese, one or two know it was Eddie Adams who took the picture. That’s it for Adams. The American Flag raising on Mount Suribachi during the Battle of Iwo Jima? Why Joe Rosenthal took that one – something most learned when his obituary was published the other day. Matthew Brady and all those dead soldiers in the Civil War? Who has any interest in these drab works today?
No, I’m afraid photojournalism is about as much respected as an art as its twin, journalism. Journalists award one another the Pulitzer Prize as no one else will reward them, for theirs is a transient art, good for the moment, forgotten tomorrow.
The list above include five photographers who made their living in the world of fashion (Penn, Avedon, Snowdon, Beaton, Blumenfeld) yet each reached to greater heights with their art and reportage work. Beaton’s searing pictures of London in the Blitz are more than mere photojournalism and his work in the Far East approaches Cartier-Bresson’s best. Penn’s fertile mind rendered art of everything about him. Snowdon’s work, the touchstone of sensitivity, ranks as one of the greatest photo-portraitists. Avedon was incapable of being ordinary in any work he did, be it fashion or social commentary. Blumenfeld simply changed the way we see.
And what of the others? To a man they were great photographers of man and his environment. From the cubism of Cartier-Bresson to the expressionism of Walker Evans, the beauty of Kertesz or the sublime passion of Sudek, they simply saw more clearly, in a fresher vein, than anyone before.
But how about since? Why is it that most of these ‘Greats’ are long gone? Has the world stopped making great photographers?
No, not a bit of it. Surf photographs on the Internet and you will see photography every bit as good as that of these masters. But the problem is, we no longer care. The age of the still photograph as a Great Photograph is over. On the one hand, still photography has never been so ubiquitous, or so easy to do well, if only from a technical perspective. Focus, exposure, sharpness – they are all pretty much guaranteed today. Results? Instant, obviously. So while it is finally true that Anyone Can Take a Photograph, and certainly many good photographers can take a great one, the audience is, in large part, gone.
And while I, for one, find that sad, I know better than to deny history.
Today’s attention spans, in Western civilization at least, are simply too short for the still picture to make sense. Who is going to stop and gaze and think and wonder just what was going on when Cartier-Bresson pushed the button and why he chose that moment to push it? You and I, maybe, as I doubt you would be visiting here otherwise. But the consuming public needs 24 images a second to hold its attention, even if the visual content is execrable, the message beyond banal. Maybe our brains have become so attuned to, nay, drugged by the need for constant change, that we prefer moving pap to still literature?
And that is why, except for a few devotees of the art, there are no new Great Photographers any more in the world of still photography.
