I’ve all the time regarded top-tier skilled photographers with awe. The means they’ll modify f-stops and ‘paint with light’ to conjure up – at their greatest – a picture for the ages.
In my world, iconic images – David Bailey’s black-and-white of Mick Jagger in a fur hood or Duffy’s Alladin Sane-era Bowie spring to thoughts – get handled with as a lot reverence as work by the Old Masters. Even if the photographer has taken direct inspiration from the work of precise Old Masters, corresponding to Girl With A Pearl Earring or The Birth of Venus.
We not want go to a gallery, or purchase a e book or journal to view such imagery; a fast Google Search brings it up on-screen. However, that prepared entry – like turning on a faucet to get water – has stealthily decreased the artistry it took to create them to a commodity. Or so the tech giants would love.
Whether we’re speaking the musings of a Love Island contestant or sepia-tinged early pictures by Julia Margaret Cameron, it’s all simply now “content”.
God, how I hate that phrase. I feel the rationale I dislike it’s that it lumps the whole lot collectively, no matter benefit or worth. There’s no curation concerned.
It’s subsequently massively reductive and disrespectful to whoever has created the art work, written the article, shot the movie, recorded the weblog or composed the music. It means that the whole lot thrilling about human expression is simply knowledge to be consumed – or force-fed to us by algorithms.
This isn’t snobbery or technophobia on my half; I’m extra involved about lack of humanity.
Yes, the ‘content material creator’ financial system is likely to be, presently, serving to to spice up or prop up the photographic trade. The accessibility of know-how could have additionally impressed somebody to choose up a digicam for the primary time, construct a web site or launch a YouTube channel.
All of these are good things. So, the ‘creator’ half of that description is one that I like and have time for.
The ‘content’ half – the bit that’s not, by and large, serving the majority but instead the tech bros and social media giants – I’m far less enamored with or convinced by.
One thing I do like about social media – or, at least, did before it became addictively controlling and potentially toxic – is that, at its best, it can feel democratic. Like the playing field has been levelled.
However, far from art forms being more widely appreciated because of increased accessibility, we’re in danger of viewing the act of art creation in increasingly shallow terms. Terming everything “content” loses the wider context and any nuance in the ever-hungry pursuit of clicks.
When we talk about a photograph, we know immediately what we’re referring to. When we talk about “content”, it could be anything. Or nothing.
And in my opinion, too often it’s nothing.
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