PHOTOGRAPHY CHANGES EVERYTHING
PHOTOGRAPHY CHANGES EVERYTHING
Photography has not only been seen as an activity, it has become more interesting to more people as a practice. People post, share on social media how they do, photos about their day, exciting moments, sad moments, friends birthdays. Photography is active.
But what’s photography? What makes a good photograph? There has been a series of debates on what actually photography is. Different have defined photography based on their contexts. This is because apart from it being a shared language, it’s subject to rules, specific criteria and expectations that vary from one context and field to another.
Marvin Heiferman an American curator tells us that instead of spending time figuring out what makes photographs good, we should rather spend time figuring out how photographs do their work. In his writing Photography changes everything, he creates an opportunity to explore the medium’s active role in our lives and the world.
Photographs are still made in record numbers with estimates of around 1.3 billion new photographs daily, close to ½ a trillion every year. Not only have these photographs show things, but they have also engaged us emotionally, intellectually, neurologically, viscerally, visually just to mention a few. They have been able to affect us in a number of ways, exciting or calming us, solving as well as creating problems, empowering and at times demeaning us and has fostered empathy within us as well.
Playing a pivotal role in our quests, photography as a medium comes in categories that ultimately changes what we want, what we see, what we are, what we do, where we go and also changed what we remember.
The fact that photography evolves, so are the ways we engage with and talk about the media, a lot has been changing and these changes have influenced the impacts of photographs.
· Heiferman, Marvin, and Merry A. Foresta. Photography changes everything. Aperture, 2012.
