Your Audience…
Forgive this brief foray into self-indulgence…
A little while back I read a blog post that jogged my memory of something I’d written in my journal whilst at Uni.
(I’ll get to said blog post in due course.)
I wrote the following when I was feeling a little disillusioned with the whole medium. Looking back, some of it was a little naïve, (ok, quite naïve), but the general undercurrents still hold some resonance.
Self-indulgent ramblings, circa 2010
So, this brings me to a post by Blake Andrews, (originally found over at James Luckett’s Consumptive.)
One line immediately stood out to me.
And suddenly, like an unexpected (but welcome) slap in the face, it made all of the above feel ok.
Some typos in there mate. Poor show.
To be honest, I’m not even slightly content with my audience being other photographers. Are we that snobbish/different/uninteresting to warrant obscurity? If your goal (however naive) is to influence social change (however small), what makes you think that it’ll happen in a community of people who are, as you already stated, converted (in a way)?
If you’re genuinely fine with what you claim to now be divinely enlightened by, then great, but if a bunch of other camera wielding freethinkers is all I’m ever going to show my work to, then it’s time for a new approach.
I wouldn’t say it was a feeling of contention or divine enlightenment by any means. Maybe you got the wrong end of the stick.
Just the realisation that it is the way things are.
People who dig the medium will always be the first port of call.
Political art is consumed by art fans.
Political music is consumed by music fans.
Political literature is consumed by literature fans.
Why would photography be any different?
Anything you can achieve outside of your immediate realm is just a bonus, right?
Did RATM really think they could change the minds of the entire world?
Or just influence the minds of music fans, who, in the perfect world, would start to spread the message to the rest of the world, one person at a time…?
The obvious difference here is that the photography world in this context is so tiny that it doesn’t really warrant mention. Mainstream music is not comparable in my eyes. Do you really know anybody who doesn’t actively listen to music?
I think that was a really well written piece! Definately asks questions that I often try and tackle (with no resolution). I think you would need to make a distinction between art photography and ‘the document’ as the two have different outlets, Burtensky in particular has featured in Time, National Geographic etc which has a a huge readership regardless of photographic backgrounds.
I dont think sailing to China would have been an option and bring the air miles into it is rather like comparing something to hitler in an argument…
In the end the photography audience is arguably the most rapidly expanding audience in the creative field due to the ubiquity of digital cameras, in this case its probably the best medium to share your ideas and thoughts.
Yay! Finally some kind of debate!
Some good points Greg. In my original stream-of-consciousness rant I’d forgotten about Burtynsky’s other outlets.
(and I agree that the air miles argument was a pretty poor comeback.)
However, I will probe your statement ‘arguably the most rapidly expanding audience in the creative field due to the ubiquity of digital cameras’ – are you able to expand on this ‘audience’? I’m not sure if I’ve missed your point, but to me, ubiquity of cameras merely results in 90 billion photos on facebook – and doesn’t directly result in a captive audience willing to engage with the medium…
But perhaps I’ve mis-understood what you were getting at here?
Kris – I do get where you’re coming from. And I pretty much am on the same side as you still.
But if you’ve got any ideas on how you / I / Epstein / anyone can regularly bring our / their work into contact with Mr and Mrs Bloggs in a truly meaningful and significant way, then I’m all ears.
I guess I agree with and understand all of the points raised here, there is no ‘answer’ as such anyway, just open discussion, it’s very interesting.
I would say that realistically the only pictures that have a large and quite immediate impact are those that end up on the newspaper front pages, simply due to the large readership, links to other media like TV etc and their often shocking nature. Because of the availability of newspapers and the way that they greatly feature in everyday life, particularly in the major cities of the world, it is these pictures that will no doubt have the greatest impact of all.
While I value and respect work created in a similar vein to Burtynsky etc and it has an appreciative audience, it simply will never reach enough people to have a world-changing impact.
I think it is also to do with technology. While photographs are more readily available both to view and take our own, there are simply so many that they must lose their value. Whereas in earlier times eg. the Vietnam War it is well known that photographs really did help change public opinion in America towards the war, probably partly because images were more special then as no one had the immediacy of digital capture. There was also no real question of manipulation back then, credibility would have rarely been thought about. Today people are more aware of manipulation in the media and everywhere, leading to greater suspicion and less credibility/value, surely?
Just my two cents.
Is it shallow not to feel the need to try to change the world?
I would agree with Alick that possibly the over saturation of images causes them to have less impact now than they might have done in the past rather than more. Surely the more we see of images and footage of shocking or disturbing events more we become desensitized? However I would say that the manipulation issue is a bit more complex, since a lot of the “iconic” war and documentary imagery could be seen to be manipulated in some way long before photoshop, even if only through manipulation of subject or composition in front of the lens. However it’s true that there is probably more public perception of manipulation, which I guess is the key point.
Wow this caught on
What I meant by the larger audience is the fact that as more people are taking pictures site such as flickr allow for a huge community of people to share photographs an become more interested in the medium. There is a vast amount of mundane images on flickr but I think as the camera is pretty much on every individual (fleeting statement) in cameraphones people are beginning to see more photographically and therefore are interested what others are doing. I think that photography exhibitions are far more likely to draw in a ‘floating’ audience as in most cases photography doesnt alienate the average viewer like alot of other modern art exhibitions do.
As for the manipulation debate, that one is indeed complex. I think you would need to differentiate documentary work and photojournalism.
In the case of photojournalism if you look at the images taken through ‘citizen journalism ‘ and cameraphones especially, then the onus is on the immediacy of the images presenting a news story, you have to go to alot of effort to doctor a cameraphone image.
I have to say that I don’t think fear or suspicion of manipulation in the media is of any concern to Jonny Everyman. I’ve certainly seen no evidence to suggest that, despite the ongoing discussions from people ‘in the know’.
I also don’t care much for front page newspaper photographs. I think they’re cheap and manipulative in ways far deeper than cloning and airbrushing. It’s true that their shock value and immediacy helps spoon feed the less investigative of the populous, but I have little time for it personally. They do their job, for better or worse.
I also care little for ‘changing the world’, but that’s a loaded statement anyway, and it’s never used by the intelligent in a way that’s not tongue in cheek. What matters is presenting facts and asking questions. People aren’t stupid, they’re busy. The world is a big place and there are some big issues, the best anybody can hope to do is present the truth as they see it and see what happens. Man creates his own destiny.
I have no answer to your question Jimmy, but I do think we’re kidding ourselves if we think that photography alone (in this context) finds itself far enough afield to properly impact (with obvious exceptions, one of which is mentioned above). Because of that, I don’t wish to put all my eggs in that basket. It’s what we know, and it’s what we love, but if your agenda (as it is, like mine) is bigger than a passion for photographs, then there’s no harm in maximising the work for your cause through other things.
Even when we believe that photographs are the best medium to show something we feel is important, there must be a tradeoff between the maximisation of content, and the maximisation of people reached. That said, we could stick to what we do, and the people with the same views using different media can do the same thing, saturating each audience in each field. There would be no harm in that either.
It would be impossible for me to write down any hard and fast rules that I follow at any given time. I’m a passionate, freely speaking person with an interest in the collective good, and because of that, my optimism/pessimism pendulum swings tumultuously. What it comes down to is doing what you love. Maybe the impact shouldn’t be the goal. Maybe the cathartic satisfaction achieved through expressing your emotions, your views or your questions should be enough, and that any dominos it collapses through that momentum you create should be a bonus.
Wow. Epic thread developing here. Too many things to reply to it all on an individual level. Very healthy stuff though.
One name I would like to throw into the ring for discussion is Simon Norfolk.
He admits that part of his reason for going down the Museum route is because the older he gets, the more aware he is of his own mortality, and he wants future generations to be able to walk into Museums / Galleries in 100 years time and to be able to say, ‘Oh wow, look, there were actually people around who did oppose the war in Afghanistan.’ (I wanted to italicise ‘were’ and ‘did’, but wordpress won’t let me…)
Whilst being totally valid and something I welcome with open arms, this kind of retrospective voice does seem somewhat disheartening to me if that’s one of the main motivations for the crème de la crème of our medium, rather than any kind of tangible ‘change’ / ‘impact’ right here and now.
And I’m saying this as someone who’d happily lick Norfolk’s dusty boots clean for a living.
Hopefully I’m misinterpreting him and he truly believes he can achieve both.