The age of the camera is dead. No one cares anymore. Apple, stop spending millions on countless billboards showing photos taken with iphones, no one cares anymore. For roughly one hundred years photography was a new and passionately followed art form. But the truth is no one cares anymore. It’s a technology now not an art form. The photos are still there but the passionate following is gone. No one cares.
I know some people will say they still care. How many of these people are photographers themselves, whether pro or amateur? It’s like poetry, only aspiring poets go to poetry recitals. Take away the dream of becoming a poet oneself and the market shrinks to zero. People will pay lip service to poetry for the purpose of appearing cultured but the only motive left for following poetry is the hope that someday one might be recognized as a poet oneself. This is the curse of the coffeehouse open mic night. Everyone is there to perform themselves and leaves right after their performance. The audience shrinks by one after every act. If you’re the second to last one to perform your audience is one. If you’re the last to play your audience is zero. This is what happens to an art form after it has lost its following but kept its prestige. So yes some will say the photography is not dead. And they can meet on weekends with the poets because photography is dead.
People can take all the pictures they want but they can’t make the public care. Something has changed. There is no magic left in the camera, that frozen moment in time no longer seems like a window into an entire world. We used to look at these frozen moments over and over again and get drawn into this magical world, almost a dream state. It’s like when you read a book that grabs you. That little frozen moment was not a split second of life, it was an entire world. But something has changed, the truth is no one cares anymore. The main reason is technology. It has replaced art with artifice. This is how the public views the photograph now, as an artifice. What instagram filter did you use? What photoshop filter? Did you use a non destructive editor on it, I heard those are the best. These are the questions people ask now when they see a photograph. They don’t get drawn into a little world by the frozen moment, they are not curious about the people in the picture, their past and what they were thinking. You wonder what instagram filter was used and then your curiosity is exhausted. Technology has changed the photograph, it is not art, it is artifice and will never go back.
I think age matters here. I am old enough to remember when photography was one of the premier arts. My experience is most people my age refuses to admit that era is over. And most people who are too young to remember that era can never understand how much more photographs used to be to people. The photograph used to be magic, for me and for everyone. I remember as a child poring over the Life magazine issues. Life magazine doesn’t exist now. It was for pictures, the words went into Time magazine. The magazine was printed extra large on heavy paper with better quality printing than usual. It was a vehicle for photographs, a monthly delivery of photo essays and spectacular shots. We devoured it and stared at the pictures. It had something television didn’t.
There is something about that frozen moment that video doesn’t have. Even though video has more information it feels less informative. Video plays on and on and is distracting, it is too much like real life. Video is the person talking at the table next to you. This makes it harder to think, not easier. The frozen moment of a photograph is different. This is not the difference between a short story and a novel. I would be happy to say it’s the difference between a poem and novel except poetry is dead too. Art forms don’t last forever. Who goes to poetry readings except aspiring poets? That means no one goes to poetry readings. If you’re going there hoping for your turn it's about ambition and not appreciation. Who goes to the ballet except people who daydream about being ballerinas? This is occupational porn, a prop to help you fantasize. Sort of like how NASA only exists so people can dream of being astronauts.
The frozen moment used to be an art form. It gave you a window into a scene a video feed didn’t. The person talking at the table next to you is distracting. There is more information in video but the frozen moment has more insight. You have the time to stop and notice the little things. There is so much information in video that you have to ignore the little things to maintain coherence. Twenty four frames per second, that is too much. It can’t be viewed as twenty four frozen moments. Even if you manage to spot a small, but insightful feature the person talking at the table next to you distracts you from it. Video is distracting from the small details. It is a cacophony of people at the table next to you talking, pulling your mind away from the small details. Nothing is frozen, nothing small can be noticed. Each frozen moment is an entire world to explore. But twenty four frozen worlds a second, one thousand four hundred and forty four frozen worlds a minute is one thousand four hundred and forty three too many entire worlds. The excess of information in video reduces the mind to paying fleeting attention to only the most attention grabbing details, the ones that shout out at you. Everyone in the restaurant is talking, but the one you remember is that one who was talking the loudest at the table next to you. This is imposition, not insight.
The frozen moment of a photograph is different. It doesn’t impose, it invites exploration. The great photographs of the past can hold your attention for hours. Maybe not at one stretch, but you can come back to them again and again and it adds up to hours. Like those posters we used to have on our walls and look at for years. The more you look at the old photographs of the past the more you see. You see little things you never even heard anyone talk about. If you see something in video everyone is talking about it because everyone talks about the same things with video because everyone only looks at the loudest details that impose themselves on our attention, like the loud person at the table next to you. But you can look at the photograph for hours and notice the small details. The South Vietnamese policeman’s finger has already pulled the trigger on the .38. The trigger is flush against the grip, the bullet is already on the way. The frozen moment of a great photograph invites you to a personal relationship with it that is unique from the relationship others have.
The speed of one frame a second lets you fully absorb the moment. You know there aren’t twenty three more frames coming before the second is over. This is the only frame and there is no person talking the table next to you to distract you. No other time distracts you from that one moment. You can fully react to it because you are not distracted by the rest of time. The past and the future do no intrude on your reflection and reaction, you given the unique freedom of reacting only to this one moment. The first time a deaf boy here’s his own voice through a device, I used to love this picture as a kid. Was part of the magnificent Life magazine series that I adored as child. We all adored Life magazine, at one time. And then it just dies, because the world moves on. But that picture was my favorite Life magazine picture, a deaf boy hearing his voice for the first time. But not because of me, because of girls. You could show the frozen moment to one and they would change from being a girl to puddle instantly. Video can’t do this. The next moment intrudes on the previous, it interrupts and distracts, it is the person talking loudly at the table next to you. Twenty four interruptions a second, the human mind can’t keep up and surrenders and stops reacting. But with that frozen moment of a deaf boy hearing his voice for the first time it does not get interrupted, there is no distraction. It can be fully reacted to. And then the unsuspecting neighborhood girls get turned into girl puddles. That is gone in the twitter age. The only thing twitter can do is make girls angry. That’s not even close to being as good.
The frozen moment has less information but more insight. An eternal moment, an unnatural experience provided for us by technology. One frame forever has more insight than twenty four frames a second. Instead of a frozen moment it has moments destroyed by the next one displayed, and such a flood information it can only be intelligible by being incomplete. Most of the twenty four frames a second have to be ignored to reduce the information to quantity that can be absorbed as more than chaos and noise. With the frozen moment everything can be viewed and absorbed, the frozen moment can be entirely understood without reduction, without filtering. It is visual but it is not video, it is it’s own art form and has a special quality that no other art form will ever have.
And it’s dead. It’s gone and it’s not coming back. For around one hundred and fifty years technology gave the human race a new art form that had qualities no other art form had. Us old folks used to stare at those photographs. It is all gone because technology killed its own creation. Photography has gone from art to artifice and now no one cares. The main problem is no one values anything easy. And the photograph has become easy. Too easy to be valued, I won’t call it a commodity because gold is a commodity and it is valued. The advance of technology has made photography ever present. It is not a commodity, it is like air, it is all around us. And when was the last time you paid for air? No one values what is ever present.
The ease of modern photography devalues it. The frozen moment used to be special because it was captured, partly through chance, party through persistence, partly through skill. All three had to come together for the shutter to click at just the right time. Capturing that special moment forever was once something special, the great skill behind it and the great luck behind it instantly appreciated. Appreciated fully, one appreciated the skill of the photographer, the work he put into being there and getting it at just the right time. And you appreciated that this perfectly timed push of the button brought something special into your life, a frozen moment which is a window into a different world.
Secretariat won the Belmont Stakes with a time of two minutes and twenty four seconds. Only once during the entire race did his rider look backward to see how far ahead he was. That one time was captured by only one of the photographers there that day. The Triple Crown is winning the most important short race, medium race, and long race in one year. The Preakness, the Kentucky Derby, and the Belmont Stakes. Because Secretariat set an unbreakable record at the Belmont and won by thirty one lengths he is always thought of as a distance horse. But the rider always swore that he was strongest in the Preakness but he held the horse back out of caution. He said won the Belmont by thirty one lengths by mistake because he didn’t know how far ahead he was, because he only looked back once and then it was too late. But that one look back is frozen forever.
This can’t happen anymore. You can’t catch that one time someone looks back. Because you are catching all the times. If you display a photograph of one moment it is simply the one you chose out of countless and the viewer knows it. There is no chance, persistence and art. There is only technology and so art becomes artifice. The cameras can take countless pictures and the photographer will flip through them on a computer monitor and pick one out. Or a video record will be made and a screen shot made into a photograph. There are even cameras that will silently record the images just before and after you push the button. So later you can look at all three and decide which one you want. There is no longer an art to getting it just right. It’s always just right, the technology does the work for you. And then you filter it, crop it, edit it, and then you can even fake it and make the photograph show anything you want. Photoshopped is now a synonym for faked. Photo used be a synonym for authenticity, we used to say photo realistic and photographic memory. Now it means artificial. It’s not real, it’s just photoshopped. Just. It is merely artifice, the art is gone. There are no magic moments caught on film through a combination of chance, persistence and skill. It’s just photoshopped.
Everyone of every age just knows it’s all fake. No one cares about photography anymore, that is all gone. It’s all just photoshopped now to the viewer, the magic is gone. When something is this easy to get right it feels mechanical. Even worse, when something is this easy to fake photography isn’t a window into another world, it is just another means for the world to try and manipulate you. It’s not a faceted reflection of the truth but just one more lie being streamed to your brain by the media. It’s not a faceted reflection of the truth, it is one more false reality to be fought through in an effort to live authentically. It’s not a window, it’s a brick wall to be smashed if one will be free.
If photography is not dead then where are all the great photographers? They are gone like their art form. The list of great photographers is like the list of great composers, it just emphasizes how dead the form is, museum pieces and not music. There once was an art form called photography, it’s gone now. You can tell it’s gone the way you can tell ancient Rome is gone, the list of its great heroes are all dead. Let us look at these lists:
Twenty Seven Most Famous Photographers
Yeah, they're almost all dead now. Robert Capa and Ansel Adams are almost always the top one on these lists, this time it was Capa.
Top 10 Most Famous Photographers of All Time
This time Ansel Adams won. Born in 1902 when photography was the hip new thing.
The Ten Best Photographers of All Time
In a gutsy move they put Capa tenth. Ansel won as usual. Everyone on the list is dead or older than me. First thing to make me feel young in a while. I wish all lists were like this.
Look up lists of the most famous photographers on your own, they are mostly dead. Because the art form is dead. It’s no longer art, it’s artifice. No one new can be added to the list of great photographers just like no one will ever be added to the list of great composers. A once living art form is now a museum piece. The door is closed and no one new will be added to the lists.
It is the same with lists of famous photographs. Any new one is there for political reasons, to call attention to some favored cause. None of the new ones changed the world, none of the new ones made anything different. That time is gone because photography has become artifice. No one believes a photograph is true anymore while before no one believed a photograph could be untrue. It’s just photoshopped now. If people push one of these recent photographs it is because they support the political angle. But it doesn’t work, no one’s mind is changed. The connection was severed by the omnipresence of computer technology, the frozen moment is now artifice and always will be.
Because no one views photography as an art form anymore no one feels the need for photographers. At least not in a way where they are viewed as special, as noteworthy. It’s just photoshopped, and you can do that yourself. You can pick your own instagram filter. To the extent that people feel a connection to photographs it is to the ones they took themselves. This leads to the unsightly mania for taking one’s own smartphone picture of something that countless others have already taken a cell phone picture of and countless more will do so in the future and most will be online and there is no need to take one’s own. But to the extent that the public still cares about photographs it is to the extent that it cares about photographs personally taken.
How many people prefer to look at their own watercolors instead of a Turner? My guess is very few. And which would you rather own? In art there is a personal and financial value on the works of the best in the field. This once applied to photography but no longer. Today people would rather have a crooked, out of focus cell phone picture that they took themselves than have a portrait by the leading light in the field. To the extent that the camera still matters it is to the extent that it matters that you took the photograph. It doesn’t have to be all that good. If it’s poorly framed that can be fixed in photoshop. If the colors are wrong there is an instagram filter for that. But what technology can’t change is that you took the photograph. That personal connection is now the primary emotional connection people have to photography.
At public events you see this in the mania to take your own cell phone picture of something that thousands if not millions of others are taking pictures of as well. And the thousands of others will put their pictures on the internet, you could always search for them if you need one. And dozens of professional photographers will be at every public event and their photographs will also be easily found on the internet as well. It might be illegal but you can take those professional quality photos and use them for yourself. The internet makes access to professional level photographs of public events free and simple. But no one wants those pictures. Those don’t count. They don’t want professional, perfectly done photographs of an event or celebrity. They don’t want someone else’s poorly framed photograph. They want their own poorly framed photograph. They want the one they took.
It’s the connection, the emotional tug from having taken the photograph yourself that keeps the public interested. It doesn’t look better than the photo the pros take, it looks worse. Of course with enough time at the computer you might be able to fix that. That drops the value of the professional photo. And most importantly you have already seen so many professional photos in your life that you are numbed. You have seen high quality photos too many times to care anymore. It’s just photoshopped anyway. There is too much of it out there to be valued. How many Turner watercolors are there? Did he photoshop them? Watercolors are harder to paint than oils because you can’t paint over your mistakes. That’s the opposite of being photoshopped. How much does a Turner watercolor sell for? A lot. Will people wait in line at the museum to see them? Yes. It is art and not artifice. There is a connection and an appreciation. Will you wait in line to see the greatest watercolor artist of all time? Of course you will. You can’t make mistakes with watercolors because you can’t erase or paint over as with oil paintings. It’s the hardest form of painting. Every brush stroke is permanent, there are no second chances. And Turner was the best at it, of course you will wait in line at the museum to see a Turner in person. It is art.
The photograph is no longer art, it is no longer a Turner watercolor. It is artifice, it’s just photoshopped. The only connection left is from having taken the photograph yourself. It doesn’t matter what kind of camera you used. That is why camera sales have been tanking since 2008. No one cares anymore, it’s just photoshopped. The camera in your cell phone is good enough. It focuses for you. It adjusts the colors for you. It does everything for you and if you don’t like it you can photoshop it, or use an instagram filter. The art is gone, but there is still this personal connection of having taken the photograph yourself. It is no longer a frozen moment, it is no longer art. But the personal connection keeps it from artifice. It is not art, but it is not artifice. It is poorly framed, it is an amateur photograph. It was not taken with a camera, it was snapped with a cell phone. But you snapped it, and that lends the photograph genuineness and creates a connection. It is not an art form, it is not a frozen moment. But it is not artifice, it is not just photoshopped. It is a souvenir, a point of connection between you and the memories of public events, public places, and public figures. Why stick your hand in the air to take a poorly framed photo of the celebrity who came to your charity event? Because you don’t care if the photo is properly framed. Technology has rendered all skill irrelevant, if the photo is too good it’s just photoshopped. That poorly framed photo from a hand stuck in the air to get over the crowd is not art, but it is not artifice either. It is a point of personal connection. It is that time you got within twenty feet of Dwayne the Rock Johnson. You can prove it happened too. Look at this photograph. It is not a frozen moment. It is not a window into a world, it is a line of connection between you and the larger world. You’ve heard of The Rock, he’s famous. I saw him once, here is the pic I took. It’s not properly framed, I could have fixed that in photoshop. I could have used an instagram filter. But I like it this way. It is not art, it is not artifice. It is proof that I have some sort of connection to the world. I’m not famous, but I am part of the same world that they are part of.
In interviews celebrities complain about the cell phone mania. Jezza talks about this. A group of ten tourists, who all know each other intimately, recognize you and want their photo taken with you. They are most likely a family group. If not family very close friends. One could very well take a photo or a series of photos and then quickly share them with the whole group. Technology is great for that. Take one picture, effortlessly share it with all your friends. The most time consuming part is deciding which technology to use for that. Wifi? Bluetooth? Airdrop? Email? Maybe I should just make prints. You can go online now and get poster sized prints made and mailed to you now. Maybe send a print to each person of that time we met Jezza in the lobby of the Four Seasons. Or just put the photo on instagram and let everyone download it. No wait, maybe twitter. No wait, facebook. Maybe email is just the easiest. Deciding how to share the photograph takes longer than sharing it.
But no one wants to share the photo, thus the celebrity consternation. If ten tourists see Jezza in the lobby of the Four Season then they want to take ten photos of him with ten cell phones. Technology makes sharing photographs so simple that no one wants to share photographs anymore. It’s just photoshopped anyway. Technology makes photographs so ever present that it is artifice and empty of connection. For there to be any feeling involved it has to be the poorly framed photograph that YOU took with YOUR candy bar cell phone. Then it matters. The photograph is now never art and only avoids being artifice if you took it with your own candy bar cell phone. And so ten Chinese tourists in the lobby of the Four Seasons needs to take ten photographs of Jezza. Because no one will care about the photograph unless they took it with their twenty dollar cell phone. When art is impossible all that is left is avoiding artifice so the object can be genuine enough to produce a feeling of connection. Did you see my picture of the time I saw Jezza in the lobby of the Four Seasons? Did you see MY picture of Jezza in the lobby of the Four Seasons?
Technology has destroyed the photograph as an art form. It is no longer a frozen moment. It is not a window into another world that can be examined for hours, if not longer. The magic is gone, it’s just photoshopped now. Or an instagram filter. Artifice, devoid of connection. But the poorly framed photograph you took with your own twenty dollar candy bar cell phone is still a point of connection between you and the larger world. Did you make it to the Turner exhibit before it left town? Turner was the best watercolorist of all time. I saw it right before it left. Others saw the same paintings before and others will still look at Turner watercolors after I’m dead. But I saw them too. It is a point of connection between me and the past and the future, and the larger world. You’ve never heard of me but you have heard of Turner, he was the best watercolorist of all time. I saw and appreciated his watercolors, and that is a point of connection between me and the larger world and past and the future. Because it is art. But the camera is dead, it is not art, it is artifice.
All that is left for the camera to still produce a human connection is to have taken the poorly framed photograph yourself. Did you see my pictures of the Turner exhibit? I know you can go online and see a professionally taken photograph of every watercolor Turner every painted. But did you see the ones I took with my twenty dollar candy bar cell phone? The ones you see online prove Turner existed. The ones I took prove I exist. Do you want to see my pictures of the time I met Jezza in the lobby of a hotel?
Every time something happens that has the potential to be of larger interest, of larger human connection the candy bar cell phones come out. Every public event, every appearance of a public figure. Not to prove they exist, to prove to others we exist. The photograph is no longer art, but it is still a point of connection between us and the larger world. This connection is all it still has. Ansel Adams will always be the best photographer. Because he became the best before people stopped caring who was the best. No one cares now, the photograph is no longer art, it is artifice. The most famous photograph that will ever be taken has already been taken. The most influential photograph that will ever be taken has already been taken. Because that era is over. But the photograph is still with us. And we still care, as long as we took the cell phone photo ourself, we care when it connects us to the larger world.
This is why the future of the photograph is to use technology to expand on the one thing people still care about. The future of the photograph is for technology to allow every photograph ever taken to be merged and connected with every other photograph. The technology for this already exists. Not in a working form but the basics are there. Tag each photo with the necessary data, the time and GPS coordinates and the direction of the camera, or it’s azimuth. The technology for this all exists. And then software can take the photograph and use the tagged data to merge any photo either spatially or temporally with any other photograph. In the 90s it was considered smart and hip to say that in the future no computer will be useful unless it can connect to every other computer in the world. In the future no photograph will seem useful unless it can be merged with every other photograph in the world.
The software for image merging is already there. The methods have been worked out and programmers know how to best merge the edges of one photograph to another. Where there is missing information they already know how to predict what the missing information was and create approximations. This can be done so quickly that it can be used to create in real time artificial slow motion views of video feeds. A normal speed video is displayed as a slow motion video by creating artificial frames between the real ones. The computer extrapolates from the data between the real frames to create new frames that can’t be distinguished as false. This is done so quickly it can be done in real time and any normal speed video can be displayed as a slow motion video with the push of a button.
The software techniques to merge images across time and position are already there. I took a photo a little to the left of the one you took. The software to find the point of intersection and combine the two photographs into one already exists. I took a photograph of the same thing a few seconds after you did. The software techniques to merge our two photographs into a video already exists. Every photograph in the world can be connected to every other photograph.
The images will need to be tagged with data. Most photographs are taken with smart phones. They have clocks and GPS built in. Tag the image with this information. The hard part will be adding the direction or azimuth of the camera at the moment the photograph was taken. But this technology must already exists. It at least exists somewhere. By the time of the second Gulf War the US military had combination devices looking like binocular which had GPS and laser range finders built in. The user looks through the device at the target and pushes a button. Knowing its own position from GPS and the distance from the built in laser range finder the device calculates the GPS coordinates of the object you were viewing when you pushed the button. These calculated GPS coordinates can be quickly shared for weapons targeting. With the push of a button this calculated GPS position can be sent to a bomber and fed into a GPS guided bomb and sent on its way to the same target that was recently viewed through the binocular like devices. This could not work with the combination device having some method of determining its azimuth. So the necessary technology was in place twenty years ago. It's out there somewhere, the azimuth can be determined and tagged to the photograph.
All three necessary pieces of information can be determined by a smartphone and tagged to the photograph. Current time, current GPS location and azimuth. All this information can be determined by devices built into the camera and easily tagged to every photograph taken. And now every photograph can be connected to every other photograph in the world. The software can use the tagged information to merge photographs temporally or spatially.
The computing power necessary for this will be supplied by the public taking the photographs. A lot will be needed, but a lot are available. I go to the Boston Marathon and take my photographs. Hundreds of thousands do the same. That evening I enter all of my marathon pics into the right software. The tagged data gets uploaded to a server. In the present no computer is useful unless it can connect to every other computer in the world. We all own useful computers. So the tagged data from the marathon gets uploaded to the server and entered into a data base. I look through my marathon photographs through the right client software. One in particular captures my interest. What happened right after I took this photograph? Curious, I push the appropriate button. The client software determines which tagged info will contain what I am looking for and queries the server. Thousand of people took photographs of the Boston Marathon. Who was standing closest to me and took a photo at just the next moment? The server will know from its database of tagged photo data. The right photo will be downloaded to my computer and merged with the one I took. I will see what happened next and at any speed I want. That runner from Finland, he’s famous for his smooth stride. I want to examine his mechanics. So I start with the photo I took of that runner from Finland when he ran past me. And other tagged photos get downloaded and merged so I can watch a video of him running by me. I can slow the video down and see his form. Is he landing on the forefoot or the mid foot? Some people say the mid foot is better.
It’s going to take a lot of photographs and a lot of computing power. That’s already there. It is a public event, the marathon organizers set up a photo merging server. Everyone who took photos uploads their tagged data to the server. Why do we do that? Because photographs connect us to the world. Why do we take photos of ourselves standing next to Jezza in the lobby of the Four Seasons? To connect ourselves to the larger world. This is why our finger falls down on the camera button. The marathon organizers hired out a server for image merging. The thousand if not hundreds of thousands of people who took candy bar cell phone pics at the marathon upload their tagged info to the server. Maybe they upload their photographs as well, maybe they are shared peer to peer with the server as the query hub. Either way it will all work much the same. To save money let’s say the images will be shared peer to peer. So I look at my marathon photographs through my client software. That runner from Finland, he’s famous for his stride. Look, I got a picture of him running by me. What did he do just before my finger fell on the button? What did he do just after? Somewhere in the larger world these photographs exist.
I push the right buttons on my client software. The server is queried for the images showing what the Finn with the fine form was doing just before and after my finger fell on the camera button. The right photographs are chosen because all the photos are tagged with GPS, time and azimuth. So the server quickly identifies the right photographs. This is just database programming and not a drain on resources. The identities and peer locations of the photographs I need are sent by the server to my computer at home. It then quickly downloads these images from the peers using the same software that I am viewing my own photographs with. The additional photographs are merged by my own computer with the downloaded ones. This is resource intensive but when done on the client side in practical terms the cost is nothing. When things are done on the client side a seemingly infinite amount of processing power is being drawn on. So I look through my software and find the photograph I took of the Finn with the fine form. I push the buttons to see what happened to the Finn just before and after my finger fell on the camera button. In real time my client queries the server and gets the identities and locations of the right photographs and downloads them and merges them with my own. In real time I see what happened just before and after my own finger fell on the camera button. My own photographs are now connected to every other photograph in the world.
With my client querying the server and downloading the right photographs I intensely examine the Finn’s form. That trick of running as a mid foot striker, how do you do that? Can’t run as a heel striker, that’s the bad way. Hurts your knees and slows you down. Looks stupid too. If I go fast enough I can run on the balls of my feet, but then I get tired and go back to heel striking. How does the fine Finn with the fast form land on his mid foot for a whole marathon? Maybe if I watch the photographs closely enough I can learn and then next time I can run a fast marathon. Anything is possible, right? So I keep rewinding and replaying the fine Finn with the fast form running by me at the Boston Marathon. I keep examine his mid foot landing running form, trying to imagine myself running the same way. My mind is focused on the fine Finn’s fast feet, and I push the computer buttons and everything happens without my assistance. The computer software I use keeps querying the server owned by the Boston Marathon and receiving back the identities and locations of the photographs needed for my examination of fine Finnish form. This costs the Boston Marathon very little, it is just a database server and the load is minimal and inexpensively supplied. It’s really not any harder for the server than running a modern web site. The photographs I need are quickly downloaded from peers using the same software I am using. The others of course make their photographs available to others connected to the Boston Marathon server. Do you want to see my picture of me and Jezza in the lobby of the Four Seasons? We take photographs to connect ourselves to the world. We show them to others for free. We put them on instagram for free. When the technology is ready we will upload the tagged info to the Boston Marathon server and share them peer to peer.
The data will be there. People will upload their tagged photo information and make their photographs available peer to peer. Because we own cameras to connect ourselves to the larger world. We will not refuse the offer to connect even more. The processing power to merge the photos will be there as it will be done on the client side. In practical terms this makes an infinite amount of processing power available and the merging will be done in real time. At my home computer I will take for granted that I can look forward and backward in time from the photographs I took. The photos will be merged into a video for me in real time. If I want I can watch a video of the entire marathon passing before a single point. The software will work it all out for me and merge all the photographs together and I can watch at home the entire marathon field run past a single point. And I change that point, I can watch it from the starting line or the finish line. Or Heartbreak Hill, that’s the most famous middle part. I can view time go by from one point in space. I can push a button and watch time go by in reverse.
I can watch time go forward and backward from one location and I can go backward and forward across locations in one moment. I can pick a time and move across the entire marathon from start to finish and see what was happening at that moment. Pick a time during the race and a location. The software will show you the view of the marathon at that time and that location. Push the right buttons. Keep the time the same and start moving left to right. Or right to left. Keeping the time the same move the location. See the entire Boston Marathon from start to finish as it was at one single moment in time. The software on your computer will query the server and the right photographs will be downloaded from peers. Your computer will merge the images together in real time. You can move in a frozen moment up or down and watch the whole field running. If something catches your interest you can push the right buttons and the location will be fixed and the time will vary and you watch a video of the field running by. In the future every photograph will be useless unless it can be merged with every other photograph in the world. Merged spatially and temporally. Push the buttons and every cell phone pic of the Boston Marathon will be merged with every other cell phone pic of the Boston Marathon. And at your home computer you can see it all. The whole marathon, every moment and every location. Because in the future every photograph can be merged with every other photograph.
Technology serves practical purposes and it serves human purposes. Perhaps the most human purpose is to feel connected. Do you want to see my picture of me and Jezza in the lobby of the Four Seasons? In the past the photograph connected us as an art, as a frozen moment which served as a window to another world in a way that video never can. That is gone and not coming back. A thousand years from now Ansel Adams will still be the best photographer. And Turner will still be the best watercolorist. Art forms are not always eternal. Sometimes they come and go, sometimes they have a peak which is never forgotten but which serves as a closed canon. Classical music is still listened to but it is a closed canon, that time has come and gone. Photography, the art of the frozen moment, has come and gone. The era of the photograph as art is over, it is now only artifice. It’s just photoshopped. The words we use for camera technology have become metaphors for phoniness undeserving of importance. This won’t change. The photograph as art is gone forever. What remains is the photograph as a way of connecting. It currently remains as photographs we took ourselves. But the technology is already there. Tagging the photos with time, GPS coordinates and azimuth can already be done and the image merging technology is already there. The engineers and programmers have the basic problems solved, the pieces just have to be put together. And then every photograph in the world will be connected to every other photograph in the world. This will be the final form of the technology, the final way it serves human purposes.
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