It's All Black & White, Right?

 

 

                                                             

It's not real photography... if it's in colour. Or if it's digital. Or if it isn't printed. All valid positions, depending on your position. Things are complicated. Not everything is so black and white in life. Or in photography. Don't start on the 'what is art' question... A better question might actually be what is photography and what is image? And do we care? 

 

Salgado suggests we have less than twenty years left of photography, before all that is left, is image. 
For him, the tangible and important thing is the tactile print. A physical legacy that will remain long after the intangible image has faded. He may be right. But I think he's actually being over optimistic on the time scale.

 

Then again, speaking personally, printing all my works will not offer future archivists much interest. The world is flooded with images of serious note from brilliant photographers covering more important events than my grandchildren's birthday party. Apart from pictures of their own kids, what interest would my remaining family members have in the stuff I've produced and printed for myself? None at all, I suspect. By printing all my stuff, I would in effect, be simply condemning relatives to a guilt trip of a visit to the dump. So if that's the case, why should we care?

 

Well, we care because we live in the moment. And, as photographers, we should document those moments as they pass, because once they've gone, they've gone. Get on doing photography and just let others decide the merits (if any) of any artistic or documentary worth of your prints. Because only the prints will remain. The digital library hosting your images, the website, all these might go down, be bought by Elon or reformatted, or the technology will evolve to make the images inaccessible or they become corrupted. Or what's most likely, the images will simply get lost and forgotten in the vast digital fog. Much like the millions of lost personal blogs. Remember them? Did you have one? Can you remember how to access it now? Or even its name? 

 

A physical portfolio will always be there. Unless the house burns down of course... But that's life for you. Nothing is ever truly black and white.