Thanks for bringing this up. Of course, no one should take the paragraph as dogma, and for what it’s worth I don’t subscribe to “discourse on ‘the death of photography.'”

I do think that the authors have left room for the kind of images you’re talking about, even setting aside purely illustrative (story-based?) images. Some of the better photographers working in the realm of “direct representation,” like Lee Friedlander or Jun Abe, are aiming at something beyond “a dramatic moment or a beautiful scene.” In Friedlander’s case I think of his project as an almost spiritual, meditative one, while Abe, in “Citizens,” at least, finds some themes (children, mirrors, animals) and expresses them clearly. Kim and Kim probably weren’t trying to make this fine of a point, but I think we can read that into what they are saying. I’d still say that photographers working in this style should process this thought, even if they do not end up making conceptual work themselves; it’s a good thing to get beyond.

For what it’s worth, I suspect that Sunjung Kim & Suki Kim are betraying their own lack of photographic understanding by placing too much emphasis on the “myth of representation” when what I think what they’re more concerned with is the sheer overwhelming number of images available for consumption online. Anonymous photo blogs like Internet History operate beautifully on direct representation. As for the rest of Tumblr I don’t think anyone re-blogging an blue-toned photo of a poetically misty forest overlaid with a feel-good/bittersweetly self-sorry sentence in scratchy white text is too wrapped up in whether or not it challenges basic assumptions about anything. A lot of the online experience is finding confirmation in what you already want to know.

1. “In this era of images, there is nothing beyond the production and consumption of images.” — Whether or not this is the era of images, there is (among a lot of things I could name) climate change. The climate is changing regardless of images. Though I’m sure that climate skeptics and miscellaneous Koch-suckers [sorry!] would be delighted if documentary photographers would just knock it off, ruminate about the “production and consumption of images” and the “death of photography”, and let the rapacity and stupidity continue undisturbed.

2. “However, the traditional method of producing images that consisted of wandering passionately in search of subjects and shooting photos of them, no longer guarantees the meaning of photographic images as it once did.” — It never guaranteed the meaning of photographic images. When the images were taken and edited down energetically by people who’d practised hard at it, chances were higher that the results were worth looking at. (And sometimes the inexperienced and lazy struck lucky too.) But mediocrity, charges of fakery, and sheer (professional!) awfulness long predated digital photos.

(And fascinating “manufactured” photos have been around for decades. Angus McBean, Duane Michals….)

Etc. This Seung Woo Back fellow’s photos may be good; but sorry, this text does nothing to induce me to look at them.

Direct representation might be unfashionable and boring. Until someone comes along who does it beautifully again, then suddenly everyone will be excited again. Until then we happily agree with the naysayers.

The only one left behind is the one thinking there is something moving. There isn’t.

John, “Internet History” is an interesting example here, because that’s not direct representation at all! The person who runs that blog is doing is re-presenting other photos, and creating a new context for them…

Dirk, your comment is the most defensive here. Isn’t Rinko Kawauchi “doing it beautifully again,” and aren’t people excited about that? Would you say that her photos are “unfashionable”?

I really don’t think we’re talking about fashionability here, and you’re selling yourself short by trying to pass this off as a fad.

As for Direct Representation-I have to disagree. In my example the pictures themselves are just that. The context/gimmick is that they are indeed taken out of their original intended context, but this does not negate the fact that they directly represent what was photographed.

If you are concerned with the direct representation of the emotions or mood of the original photographers when each image was made, perhaps then we are discussing something that needs a better term with which we can separate the intent from the actual.

If photography is dying, it’s the people who are writing about it that are killing it. Yawn. What a snoozefest. Droning on and on about “representation”, “processes”, “meaning” and “discourse”. You know the writing has gone rank when it’s about other peoples’ writing about other peoples’ writing. Give me a break.

Mr. Back’s photos of the little army men are the best. They bring me back to the days when I used to spend time in the sun, huddled over them with a magnifying glass, wondering why ants would suffer horribly at the focus of my godly powers, while the guys in green would stand there stoically. Eventually I learned that more firepower was necessary to defeat them, and I would enlist the help of a hairspray can and a lighter to make the feel my wrath. Ultimately I wound up with several molten puddles of blackish green goo smelling of burned plastic and aqua net. And what was my accomplishment on that sunny day? Certainly more than these writers.

It definitely seems absurd to deny this statement or the one in the next post unless you’re resigning yourself to re-taking an infinite number of boring pictures. And saying it’s a question of the edit or the story is ignoring the essential problem of standing in front of something and deciding what to photograph when you know it’s already been done.

It’s easy to photograph everything and make it aesthetically pleasing. But, at this point, it’s hard to take a photograph that doesn’t remind you of another photograph, and I think that’s what Back and the Kims are trying to get at.

And I don’t think the fashionability or popularity of any one artist or photographic style changes that dilemma. But the deluge of images available has to affect the basic thought process behind the next one.

I don’t know if this adds anything to the conversation, but it seemed like these arguments were coming from a position of looking at photographs versus taking them (which might be part of the reason for the disconnect) and I figured I’d toss my hat in the ring.

My comment was in reference to the original quote (“The myth of direct representation, whether of a dramatic moment or a beautiful scene, has started to collapse and is finally coming to an end. “). The Kawauchi example you cite was exactly my point.

To be honest, reading the quote again I have even less idea what he is talking about than the first time round. And I fail to see what’s moving to be left behind of. It’s all a bit trying hard to make up something intelligent to say. I am not even sure whether “direct representation” (definition?) can or ever has existed in in the concept of photography other than a desire by the audience. And there is no change here I can detect, “sea of images” or not.

Surprised that you think trends in art, or shall we call it “art history”, have nothing to do with fashion.