We Can’t Paint

When thinking about what influences photographers today, particularly these cluster-fuck artists, I could not get away from the Internet. This is not to say that the Internet is simply a platform for displaying and consuming images, rather, it is a forum for media connectivity. Images, movie clips, music, etc, be they significant or trivial, are displayed and accessed in equal measure by a global culture en masse.

What I’m getting at here and without going into some amateur critique of globalization, is that the Internet has helped narrow down any elitist claim to image and images. In the past the issue of access to photography books, exhibitions, and even an artist’s work, has always rested in an individual’s regional and monetary place within the society. This is no longer an issue. One can experience, not corporeally of course, a great masterpiece, a rare book, and private collections that were not previously available to the public. An example of this democratizing ability can be seen in the monopolizing popularity of Google, or specifically in terms of pictures, Google Images. So how does this influence the medium itself?

Manson family members Leslie Van Houten, Patricia Krenwinkel, Susan Atkins at inmate entrance of courthouse in Los Angeles, Calif., 1973© UCLA Charles E. Young Research Library Department of Special Collections

The Internet at large has provided instant access to billions of individuals at the click of a mouse. Never before has one unifying platform so relentlessly challenged ownership and property of images. This is not only important in terms of how we connect with each other, but it has a tremendous influence on the experience and memory of those engaged. Photographers are now empowered with the ability to almost effortlessly access the content pertinent to their intricately subjective practices.

Misty (Niagara), 2005© Alec Soth

You can probably tell by now that this series of posts on the cluster-fuck aesthetic has less to do with an actual style of photography, but it is rather an investigation into the future of the medium. Photography is a practice that is always evolving, an art form unlike any of the plastic arts and is very much dictated not by tradition, but by non-professionals from all walks of life; the public. It is inevitable that the medium will move into a new realm of production, in a couple decades or so photography will most likely become completely digital. How will this change the future of photography? Who will be our new Robert Frank, William Eggleston, or Nan Goldin? It could very well be a kid armed with a cell phone camera. Now isn’t that something to think about.