Photography’s dead, says Oscar-nominated director Wim Wenders
Aug 1, 2018
John Aldred
John Aldred is a photographer with over 25 years of experience in the portrait and commercial worlds. He is based in Scotland and has been an early adopter – and occasional beta tester – of almost every digital imaging technology in that time. As well as his creative visual work, John uses 3D printing, electronics and programming to create his own photography and filmmaking tools and consults for a number of brands across the industry.
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Well, these comments made by German film director and photographer Wim Wenders are going to upset a few people. In a talk with the BBC, he says that he believes photography is dead. That it’s been killed by mobile phones. Well, I guess we should probably all just pack up and go home, then.
His, probably quite unpopular opinion all stems from his belief that everybody’s a photographer. That there’s just no point now because everybody can shoot photos with the phones in their pocket.
We’re all taking billions of pictures, so photography is more alive than ever, and at the same time it’s more dead than ever.
The trouble with iPhone pictures is nobody sees them. Even the people who take them don’t look at them anymore and they certainly don’t make prints.
– Wim Wenders
He also says that most of those photos never get seen – even by the people who shoot them. To some degree, that may be true. But his claim that people don’t make prints anymore…
Well, there’s plenty of labs around the world that would likely disagree. And mobile photography has spawned whole new businesses solely dedicated to printing your photos off Instagram, Facebook and other social media. Fuji and a number of others have also launched printers in the last few years specifically designed to let you print from your phone.
He also says that rather than allowing us to be more creative, all of the filters and presets are actually stifling our creativity. And this is one point I can get behind. He says that from personal experience, the less you have available to you the more creative you have to become. I completely agree. This has been my experience, too. But this is about the only thing I can agree with.
While Wenders blames mobile phones for what he says is the death of photography, he admits to taking selfies. But he says that “it’s not photography”. Surely that’s a personal and conscious choice? Sure, many selfies aren’t much more than a set of duck lips in a badly lit bathroom mirror. But that don’t have to be. Some are extremely well thought out.
His last claim, though, on retouching and image manipulation.
Photography was invented to be some sort of more truthful testimony of our world than painting.
It’s not really linked to the notion of truth any more. People look at photographs and think something’s done to them.
I’m sorry, but photography has always been a lie. “The camera never lies” has been one big fat lie itself since it was first coined. Simply by changing perspective or focal length, the image tells a different story than if you’d chosen to shoot from a different spot with a different lens.
And he seems to forget that there was a whole lot you could do in the darkroom to completely change the look of an image. Even with landscapes, Ansel would make new prints from a glass plate decades apart, and every print would look different to the last, made years earlier.
You would think somebody who’s made movies for over 50 years would already know this.
Wenders says that he’s searching for a new word to describe this. To describe this “new activity that looks so much like photography, but isn’t photography anymore.
Personally, I don’t think it does need a new word. And I certainly don’t think photography’s dead. The number of people who visit websites like this one on a daily basis clearly shows that it’s not.
And, to be honest, even if it were true, even if the masses had “killed photography”, why should that affect what I want to create? Why does he care so much about what other people are doing? Maybe if he’d concerned himself more on his own work instead of what others were doing, he’d have received more than just a nomination.
But what do you think? Do you believe that photography’s dead? Or do you think photography has been reborn anew in a digital age and we’re only just beginning to see where it can really take us?
[via BBC]
John Aldred
John Aldred is a photographer with over 25 years of experience in the portrait and commercial worlds. He is based in Scotland and has been an early adopter – and occasional beta tester – of almost every digital imaging technology in that time. As well as his creative visual work, John uses 3D printing, electronics and programming to create his own photography and filmmaking tools and consults for a number of brands across the industry.
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11 responses to “Photography’s dead, says Oscar-nominated director Wim Wenders”
Photography is an activity. Photographer, on the other hand, is a person dedicated to this activity. You can’t call a tourist with point and shoot camera snapping everything and taking selfie with mobile a “photographer” – I think he is mixing concepts. There is a room for creativity and self-expression for those who want to. There are ideas every day, more or less, that are expressed in various fields of photography. Just think of it: changing the direction of the light on your subject alone changes the mood; So, what about the whole world out there?
I agree with you John. As much as I respect Wenders, he does appear to be taking a snobbish standpoint: “What I do is art, but what they do is rubbish”. And the thing is, many of the phoneographers don’t even consider themselves photographers, they are just capturing moments for fun. Art doesn’t have to be deadly serious and it doesn’t need labels. For example, a portrait that captures a person’s essence is more likely to be taken in a natural setting with a phone, than in a studio or set up and posed. And yes, image manipulation has always been there: simple cropping, dodging and burning, toning etc etc.
I love the fact that this is accessible to everyone, but I don’t have to like everything that is being produced or get angry that there is too much. The more the merrier.
– “Photography was invented to be some sort of more truthful testimony of our world than painting.” Let’s face it, pohotograpghy was invented because it sounded like a cool idea and people like Niecpe, Talbot or Daguerrehad the brains to make it work
– I don’t know where that idea that when only “proper” cameras were available, they only producded Photography with a big “P”. All around the world there are attics full of crappy blurry and sometimes rather dunk pictures to prove otherwise
Who??
People don’t print anymore because the cost per print is still too high.
no, because people are lazy. printing is so cheap now
Cell phone cameras are the digital modern form of Polaroids. Polaroids were crap too. And for that matter, so were 110 Instamatics and other plastic fantastics. But they were a tool that did a job the masses wanted cheaper than other cameras, and so people bought them. Not everyone is an artist. Certainly not that grand-aunt with all the vacation photos. If a particular camera does the job you need done with the minimum of fuss and cost, why bother with anything else. I use my cell phone to take quick snap shots of things where the image quality just doesn’t matter, where the useful life of the photo will be very short, or where it’s just so damned convenient to email somebody a photo to make a point, none of which need to be printed.
As for printing, there’s not much difference between putting a photo in a drawer and never looking at it and leaving it on your selfone or the cloud and never looking at it. I have shoe boxes full of prints and negatives that will not see the light of day for a very long time.
selfone! ha ha, love it, i’m going to steal it (the homophone not your cellphone)
My friend (he is not photographer) have Samsung Galaxy S9 and Sony A7 III with Sony 50mm f/1.8 (bought for work). He takes photos for family by Sony very often. My friend doesn’t understand why camera pictures better than smartphone pictures, but feels it.
Photography is dead.
Long live photography !
Wenders has opened up a fascinating discussion, as seen in the comments for this article.
He makes some interesting points. I don’t agree with those points, but they are certainly interesting.
I’m glad to see so many people thinking about his statements. You will help photography to continue living a robust life !!
Fortunately this guy is an irrelevant idiot.