things ~ grumpy old men

August 30, 2023

IT MUST HAVE SOMETHING TO DO WITH AGING (grumpy old men / can’t teach an old dog new tricks)…a number of photography bloggers have lately been bemoaning the demise of something or another from the good ol’ days of picture making. Consider Mike Johnston in his Is Photography…Ending? entry:

“Photographers used to be respected, because, through hard-won skill and knowledge and practice, they could do things ordinary people couldn't. But the status of having specialized knowledge and skill has been evaporating for years now. Paralleling that decline is a decline in the in the need to hire a photographer for a wide array of once-common needs.”

If Johnston thinks this is new news-the “decline in the in the need to hire a photographer for a wide array of once-common needs”-I call “bullshit”. Consider this from a book I just purchased about a heretofor little known Adirondack village photographer, J. S. Wooley (worked as a photographer from 1880s-1930):

…The very existence of the Brownie meant less work for professional photographers, and Wooley, as other village photographers did, simply replaced one form of income with another.

Let’s see now…KODAK introduced the Brownie in 1900. Sounds like it’s kinda like the same as it ever was to me.

Re: “Photographers used to be respected, because… they could do things ordinary people couldn't.” I have no idea what era he’s talking about. I must have been asleep during that special time when all the common folk-every man, woman and child-held a special place in their heart and mind for their favorite photographer.

I can only imagine that every after work cocktail hour was alive with talk about, Adams, Eggleston, Steiglitz, and how about that Robert Frank guy? Not to mention the universal and feverish excitement about the upcoming Jeff WALL exhibition at MOMA. And, without a doubt, every classroom wall was adorned with portraits of beloved photographers like Weston, Evans and Cartier-Bresson. Aaahhh, the glory days.

Re: “… they could do things ordinary people couldn't.” It was Jack Kerouac who wrote, re: Robert Frank, “You got eyes." Which, iMo, was Kerouac’s way of indicating that Frank "could do things that ordinary people photographers couldn’t”. And, guess what…there are photographers aplenty on the planet today who “got eyes” and, no matter the tool they might be using, can do things that ordinary photographers can’t. And, I might add, they get plenty of recognition and respect in the same clique(s) / arena(s) as before.

iMo, it seems that complaining about the notion that things ain’t what they used to be is an old-age right of passage. A right that I have never fully adopted cuz, the way I see it, the more things change, the more-at an elemental / fundamental level-they stay the same.