“More and more I believe that art—via imagination—is the necessary counter to our information-glut crisis. I explain this by referring back to the root concepts of imagination and information. Imagination is a formative inward power, independent and generative. Information, by contrast, and by original definition, imparts inner form from the outside. To be informed is to receive the print of ideas or—and again I heed the etymology—impressions.
Imagination creates shape; information imposes shape.”
Sven Birkerts
We are all great photographers now. Anyone with an iPhone can create a perfectly exposed, perfectly focused image. With just a bit of thought and awareness, composition of the image is without imagination with a direct view of the image, followed by instant feedback once the picture is taken. Post-processing is assisted by algorithms that create interesting looks with no effort. Event traditional darkroom techniques of adjusting contrast and exposure or local adjustment of light and dark (dodging and burning) can be done right on the phone. No money, skill or training is required to publish the image to the entire world on a social media platform like Twitter, Flickr or Instagram.
Awash in images, the value of a good image is devalued. The image on this page was captured this morning and post-processed with 6 different algorithmic engines in about 10 minutes. I’ll admit it has less value to me than if I had begun the morning in the darkroom developing a roll of film and then printing later this afternoon after it had dried. Yet taking the image and adjusting it to reflect how I feel at the moment was no less genuine, just faster and less important today. And here it is to share with hundreds on Flickr and the few who will read these thoughts.
Like many photographers of a certain age, I remember vividly seeing my first print emerge on paper in the darkroom under the red safelight. It wasn’t instrumental, it was purely experiential, seeing how film and paper transformed a particular view at a certain moment into a flat image with the impression of light and odd effects that were no longer at all what had been there. The smell of stop bath.
It’s hard to make a living as a photographer now. It’s no longer a life of collecting images on slides and providing them to a stock photography vendor. Magazines no longer support the artisans that supplied them images. Our best photographers today are performers, engaging us via social media and selling us vision in return for clicks.
But that’s the value proposition of the image and its maker, not the value of making an image. Making it faster and easier is an aid to imagination, not an impediment. Let’s use the speed and lightness of the virtual to soar.
Turning doctors into clerks with Electronic Medical Records is a major contributor to burnout
