Modern photographers

We are all photographers. It used to be, if you wanted to be a photographer, you had to have a camera and some film. But as a mark of total cultural upheaval, Kodak doesn't manufacture Kodachrome anymore. You can still pick up rolls of Tri-X, the quintessential black-and-white film that all hobbyists used to start out with (and photojournalists would swear by, although I gather that now professionals have gone on to T-MAX). Instead of film today we use digital media, and we've traded in our cameras for telephones. But there is a boon in digital photography with all those non-cameras available in half the devices we all own. We now take more pictures than we ever have before. And there are so many digital photography apps that it's impossible to keep track.

In other words, photography is dead, and it is thriving. It depends on how you define photography.

So what does this mean to artists who use photography as a medium? Complex posts a survey of The 25 Photographers You Should Know by Elisa Carmichael that is a great starting point for figuring out the state of the art. Check out the specs on the pictures. For the most part, even if the images were captured digitally, a lot of hand-crafting went into their printing. In other words, while looking at them on the computer gives you a sense, is it only a sense, much like looking at a painting on the computer. Seeing that Monet slapped down some green paint to capture those water lilies in the pond next to his house is not the same as being surrounded by these paintings on the wall. I think we shortchange photography a lot, especially now that its digital nature makes it seem so fungible.

In any case, since you're probably taking a lot of pictures yourself, it's nice to see that the pros are up to.