I agree that there are gatekeepers to creativity, whether for music, painting, or photography. I don’t however think we need more of them. They are, after all, the ones who jury the awards for the magazines, or are CAs at agencies who want to win awards or whatever. Maybe instead, we need less gatekeepers, but more historians. People who keep track of and disseminate information about the history of the art or craft of photography, rather than people who will decide what’s good or bad. After all, what has mostly been mentioned above, was a deep distaste for what’s out there. And what’s out there is out there because it’s picked up and passed around by the “right” people, or gatekeepers of creativity.

It’s easier to be successful with imitation than with blazing your own trail. What’s the market leader doing? Do the same thing. Only a few will head the other way. In the long run, those who do their own thing have a better chance of standing out, but in the short term those who imitate have a better chance at profiting.

Personally I’ve found flickr to be somewhat refreshing. Sure there’s a tidal wave of garbage, but also some incredibly interesting stuff. And more importantly, it’s obvious that the stuff that’s been winning so many awards simply because of a few PS layers isn’t so ground breaking. Please, it’s time to move on. Maybe it’s time for cross processing again…

It is up to us to keep alive the tactile connection to the work. No matter how much the advertisers try to distance us from it or devalue it, whether intentionally or not, we need human connection and interaction. Everyone is playing with their new computer toys now so it is ubiquitous but it is already getting boring. We photographers are feeling it because we are close to it but the (buying) public will follow shortly. I don’t think it is a coincidence that the Cohen Bros. had no music in the soundtrack in No Country for Old Men. They recognized the manipulation and went back to good old school story telling. I was with my daughter this weekend and she was watching the Disney Channel and there was this promo for the Jonas Brothers. It was shot in B&W – made to look like the Beatles Let it Be…. It was so lame (obviously) . The sad part is that she was being fed a visual reference that was real but replaced with something that is a fabrication – the Jonas Bros. This , I think, is why a lot of kids are looking back to the 60’s and 70’s for their inspiration because it was real. We should not regurgitate the past but use our experience to just keep it real. The tools have changed, the vocabulary is always changing but the need for a connection never changes. If we establish a link to people with our images then advertisers will see that and want to exploit it.

“The advertiser will never want to lead the market. they will always want to follow. Let someone else do the heavy lifting.”

And it is necessary that their crap outsell their competitors or they will be out of a job. The funny thing is that consumers can always spot the fake, the imitator, the B-brand.

I use Lightroom to do my RAW conversions and they have these presets you can download for various effects, and as you roll over the list of effects the preview changes to show how it looks. It is kind of like flipping through the pages of Communication Arts…

I think Penn is a good example, also he has a show at the NY Library currently. When you look at his work you see perfection in imperfection if you know what I mean. The still life’s of food, cigarette butts, etc. Even a human face. When I see that photoshop technique of desat-high radius sharpening applied I really don’t get it, I mean, I know what the “idea” is that they are trying to convey. And Avedon’s faces are completely manipulated darkroom inventions. Yet there is something different between the technical perfection achievable in digital and in photo-chemical. What it tends to make me want to do is just let digital be digital, to “print the neg” so to speak. That is why I have shied away from Canon, it is too predictable.

Bert Stern flew halfway around the world to shoot a martini glass at sunrise with the pyramids behind it. Art Kane did work that looked like art. Turner, Penn… I know, I know… sounds like I long for the “good ol’ days.” Not really.

Just a different aesthetic today. Everything is over the top. “Kill Bill” fight scenes and FedX ads have so much in common. Total fantasy tried to be passed off as reality. I find it, personally, boring.

I used to buy $50 worth of magazines (and in ‘75 that was a hell of a stack…) and pore over the ads. Dissecting not only the lighting and the composition, but the message and how it tied. Wouldn’t do it today. I haven’t been knocked out by an ad since early 90’s. Well, maybe a dozen or so… but not like the Turner ads for Kohler. Not by a long shot.

Homogenization of viewpoint in the ad world is amazing and horrifying. Almost nothing stands out. And I am talking print… TV? You kidding me? Most of it is total crap, and it continues to deliver crap as “something special.”

I dropped my subscription to ‘Archive’ a few years ago due to finding the same thing over and over. Not literally… figuratively.

Bright moments are when you run across an ad in a mag at the bookstand at Barnes and Noble and get a smile. It happens now and then and it is exciting. But for me personally, it is usually a real picture with a great idea. Not a photoshopped version of something I would see in a “Matrix” flik. (Don’t get me wrong, I love Photoshop… and I use it.)

The heavy use of digital may run its course. And zigging when all others are zagging can be a good strategy. I really think that there will be more and more opportunities for real art and imagery that tells a story that is real.

Full disclosure: I was creative director at a very fast rising AD agency from 97-02 and some of the crap we pushed out was because we couldn’t get around the client expectations of their crap looking like their competitors crap. I know… sounds like a cop-out, but it was what it was.

Digress: I watched “This Old House” last night of all things and they were in New Orleans where Harry Connick and others had partnered with Habitat for Humanity to fund and construct a “musicians village” of shotgun-style dwellings specifically for musicians to occupy. Connick and Marsallis wanted to see music come back to NO and felt housing was the starting point. All the houses had porches, where typically musicians have and would gather to make music. The history of jazz in NO is maintained by older musicians taking younger musicians under their wing if they feel the individual is serious and has some chops. They pass down the forms which are both preserved and evolved through each new generation. It is largely an oral tradition. Recorded music also plays a part, many musicians learn from old recordings too.

Photography is somewhat similar. The apprentice tradition in commercial photography is strong. Also for some, book are the primary entrance into what photography can look like. I remember a teacher telling me that at first, he tried to make his prints look like what he saw in books because that is all he had to go by, until he got older and could travel to see work in bigger cities. So photography is a lot like jazz. It is dependent on older practitioners to pass down the knowledge.

As you point out, digital has altered the “power relations” between the subgroups. It is trivial to make a reasonably good print now. The “how did you do that” part of art is now not so much about the beauty of the physical print, and entirely about what is going on in the photograph. This can be good or bad. There is a picture floating around the net of Elliot Erwitt wearing a t-shirt that says “digital kills photography” or something like that. This true and false at the same time. I don’t think it has to, but it often does. Currently the flood of new images is creating a strain as you point out.

I think this is a time where we need the FIELD more than ever. And we should be aware of those novices bootstrapping themselves into the field without real experience. Those old timers on the porch in NO are what we need.