The ever growing popularity of photography seems to be steaming ahead at an amazing pace. Digital technology has undoubtedly helped make it far more accessible and relevant to masses more people than it was . The fact that digital means no film and therefore no running costs has I think greatly increased its popularity. This combined with having cameras on mobile phones, the general shrinking of the camera in size, huge improvements in auto pilot functions has expanded the use and quality of photographs for ever.
My project Somewhere Else looks at the alienating phenomena of phone use in public space which partly covers cameras , but camera use is becoming another digi-hell all of its own.
Went to a gig the other night, you know real musicians playing on instruments to a hall of people. Loads of people snapping away on there mobiles fair enough , a memento never to be printed. However there were a few too many mad amateurs holding their “cameras” at arms length watching the whole gig via a screen occasionally snapping. Is nothing real unless it happens on a screen? Are we getting hooked on LCD. The street seems to be full of people head down twittering and networking away completely oblivious to the actual physical world they inhabit.
The mobile is where many of us store that photo of our loved ones, no longer the dog eared photo in the wallet but a hole gallery of photographs of our recent past. Digital cameras have spawned a generation of screen and image dependant humans. Not only are we cctv’d hundreds of times when we venture out onto the highways and high streets, all our activities are only real to us if we photograph them. A night out is not real unless we have the smiling at camera group shot to prove it.
I think however that most of this gathering of the banal and profound will actually be lost . As most of the images do not get printed onto paper but remain as ‘files’ on a storage devise /camera/cd .When was the last time you got out your box of photo cds to have a look? Maybe we are heading to a world of total public digital exposure where the web will hold all our mementoes on social networking and photo sharing networks. Are we to trust our past to some silicone mountain in a far away place.