Future of photography

Been meaning to write something for a while on some thoughts and doubts I've had about the future of photography and then came across a piece today on Jon Rafman today on visualcultureblog (http://visualcultureblog.com/).

There is a lot of material around at the minute about the democratisation of photography, the prevalence of photography and imagery in all parts of our lives and culture. What has interested me in some of my reading is that these concerns/conflicts wihtin photography seem to have been around for some time (Sontag certainly  talked about the ubiquitousness of photography and photographic images in the 70's).

Obviously much of this is written from the perspective of photographers who are trying to determine (and arguably validate), their role. But the situation is getting "worse" due to the immediacy and flexibility of digitisation, but it also feels as though we're on the brink of the constancy of photographs turning into something which is literally constant - i.e. cameras where it is no longer necessary to click a button to take a shot, they just record constantly and you choose a frame as the photograph later (forget 8fps with a burst rate of 40 or 50 shots - what about 30fps with a recording time of a couple of hours....). Then imagine that camera as just being something which is worn on the body constantly (Syrian activists are already sewing camera phones into their jackets so that they can record surreptitiously , at that point we can move to a position where we just record our lives on an ongoing basis. And then if we can get multiple angles by connecting with other cameras that are worn by our friends in the same area.... At this point, we can just choose whatever sections amuse us afterwards....

And that is precisely what Jon Rafman has done by selecting images from Google Street View - i.e. selecting after the fact. In this instance with no involvement in the original capture. The decisive moment really doesn't come into it - if it happened, it was captured and can be tapped into by anyone at any point after the fact.

And with the advent of technology such as Lytro (https://www.lytro.com/), which allow you to choose the point of focus after the photograph is taken. And obviously the increasing immediacy of tools such as Photoshop, in 10 years time (when I will have finished my degree if I'm able to stick at it), will walking the streets with a camera in your hand seeking out interesting compositions really make sense as an activity.

When my children started to write I remember saying to my wife that in practice they would probably never write a letter to anyone once they got past the age of writing letter to say thankyou for xmas presents. Maybe before long, the act of "taking a photograph" will feel as antiquated as the act of "writing a letter".

(After writing the above I also came across Autographer http://pulse.me/s/dCo9R which is a wearable camera that "records your life"... and is available now.... so much for writing about the future!)