A group of teenagers sit in a cluster on the floor of an airport lounge photographing each other with cell phones and giggling. A man takes a picture of everything he eats that day and posts the results on his blog.Across the globe amateur photographers are recording and preserving the mind-numbing minutia of daily life. Births, birthday parties, cloud patterns, garbage on a street corner, the blur of traffic, or the neighbor’s dog. The result is an astounding collection of images adding up to hundreds of thousands of pictures every day.

Long ago was the practice of photography taken out of the hands of professionals and fine art image makers and re-packaged as a tool of the common place consumer. Photography as a practice has long mediated social relationships, has long been about documentation and ritual, about representation of the physical world, and about reality. It’s long been about taking the instantaneous moment and stretching it into the infinite. But the latest revolution in the taking, making, and sharing of images in such great volume seems somehow vastly different and much more significant.

What does this hold in store for the practice of photography, and what does it mean for those of us who make a living with a camera?

Posted May 19th, 2007