www.fotokritik.de
Texte zur zeitgenössischen Fotografie und digitalen Bildkunst
We will probably never know for sure why people take these photographs; it is fascinating to observe, however, that they do, and that doing such a thing as taking a photograph of every single meal you eat has become socially acceptable behaviour. The man who takes a picture of his Currywurst nearly every day may be unique but he is not isolated. There‘s also the man who takes photographs through the windshield of his car - he has about 4,500 of them online. There‘s the woman who posts photographs of all the things she knitted. There’s the man who takes photographs of all women he meets - he presents these neatly organized in categories such as “talked with,“ “went out with“ and “slept with“. There’s the woman who takes photographs of her feet every day. There’s the woman who posts several photographs of every single plush toy she owns. There's the man who photographs his collection of spoons stolen from airplanes — more than 1,200. There's the frequent traveller who photographs all hotel rooms he stayed in. There's the fetishist who photographs all his rubber items. There’s the man who photographs all his books, all his music CDs and all his video tapes. There's the woman who photographs every single page of her notebook. And these are just a few of the remarkable photographers I discovered on photo sharing sites.
In my understanding these people are not more peculiar than those who take thousands of pictures while traveling, those who take hundreds of pictures at a birthday party or at a wedding reception, those who photograph every single detail of the home they are living in, or those who photograph their babies every day. Contrary to popular opinion I do not think that 99.something percent of the mostly anonymous photographs stored on photo-sharing websites like Flickr are brainless rubbish. But even if we provisionally accept this popular prejudice, this still means that the remaining less-than-one-percent of photographs that are not rubbish will soon amount to a number that will equal and soon after tremendously exceed the number of so-called "good" and "important" photographs that are stored in the archives of Corbis, Getty and other corporate or institutional collections focussing on the gems of traditional mainstream photography. From here we can arrive at the conclusion that it is time to adjust the popular understanding of photography to the facts of modern times. It is time to accept the idea that photographers are not ingenious creators but extensions of their technique. The masterpiece is nothing but a random necessity, occurring more often if people take more photographs.
23.08.2008
< | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | >
Klicken Sie hier für den Bild-Blog zum Artikel
google english translation
Kommentar zu diesem Artikel ins Forum schreiben
Druckversion
Editorial
Autoren
Forum
Newsletter
Mitarbeit
Kontakt
Impressum