Remember When Photography Was Something Special?

I was an art major and photography student in college, and then a professional photographer for some years afterwards. I imagined that photographs captured something unique about the world.

I was wrong.

The professional work I did was related to archaeological surveys and specimen photography, and like scientific applications in general, these are certainly legitimate uses of the medium, whether film or digital. Other applications, I am not so sure.

Photography was invented in 1822 when the first photograph was taken by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce. But the early emulsion coatings were fragile and not very practical. Soon after, Louis Daguerre improved on the process with what is now known as the daguerreotype shown publicly for the first time in 1839.

In the 1880s George Eastman developed flexible film. This led to the first film camera, known as the Kodak, that was capable of taking up to 100 photos before the film needed to be changed. This was the dawn of the mass image phase of photographic history.

Through the 19th century, photography was used primarily to capture images of exotic locations and for paid studio portraits. Professional photographers also made money on the side with the earliest affordable pornographic images. These paper prints were bought and traded among gentlemen for many years.

Nevertheless, George Eastman was onto something when he created the first high-volume camera, suddenly making photographs affordable and ubiquitous. By most estimates, upwards of 3.8 trillion photographs have been produced in the 185 years since the debut of the daguerreotype. And today with the rise of digital images, this number is rising astronomically.

This is not including the images captured by motion picture cameras. The early models filmed at 24 frames-per-second (fps), which comes to 129,600 images for every 90 minutes of film. Today the professional digital motion picture camera produces 60 fps or 324,000 digital frames for every 90 minutes of motion picture.

But even if we leave aside motion pictures, the number of photographs produced in recent years has exploded. It is estimated that in 2024 alone, 1.94 trillion photographic images will be produced, 94% by amateurs using smartphones. Globally, we capture 5.3 billion photos daily, or 61,400 per second.

By most estimates, there are some 14.3 trillion photographs in existence today, of which 136 billion have been indexed by Google Image Search.

The pairing of camera and mini-computer — the smartphone — became an addictive combination. Very often today, we raise our phone for a photo just because the device is in our hands and we have nothing better to do in that moment. It is not so much about producing a photograph as an act of image capture for its own sake.

The result is millions of photographic images residing on our phones or in cloud storage long after the devices are thrown away or recycled.

What can we expect as photographic images merge with AI? AI image generators mimic photographs, some more whimsical than others. But for each elemental image produced by an AI system, there are some ten to fifty versions also available. Ultimately, these will become cheaper and more available than photographs, and conventional cameras will be viewed with growing nostalgia.

What does this mean for the dozens of family photo albums many readers keep on their shelves? Or for the “art” photographs I produced with my view camera in college?

Fundamentally, the massive quantity of images that surround us in our daily lives cheapens the value of any photographs we thought were special, meaningful or artful. Back when photography was a process, it seemed that capturing that special moment in time was something special. Today, it’s like, why bother?

Yes, many of the moments in time we capture with our small or large cameras are indeed “special” because of the mystery of the moment, the unwritten story behind each object or person captured frozen in time. They may also be “special” because we relate to the objects or persons pictured. It is my belief that these two perspectives lend the impression of high value to an image that may be personal or artistic or rarely, both.

But when we consider how many similar photographs are created every time we raise our smartphone, it puts a different spin on things. Check your photo albums and find a picture of yourself at five years old. There you are an adorable kid in what is arguably the best time of your life. Now go next door, meet that neighbor with whom you have only waved, and look at their photo albums and find the picture of them at five years old.

Notice any similarities? Very likely the clothes, the toys, the expressions are both very similar. Why is this? Because most of us have been taught from a young age how to react when a camera is pointed at us. And also because the need to capture that childhood moment is very much a commercial product, inspired largely by the great expansion of amateur photography in the 1950s and 1960s. The commercialization was the work of companies that produced photographic materials: cameras, film, printing papers, and so on.

Companies like Kodak, Ilford, Fujifilm, Canon, Miranda, Bolex and many others. I realize that appreciating the extent to which our behavior is mediated by marketing may be difficult, and yet the evidence is all around us. Amateur photography, including those darling family photo albums, is the direct product of commercial marketing.

So that photo of you as an adorable five year old is very much like the neighbor’s photo, which is very much like their neighbor’s photo, multiplied all through your neighborhood and every neighborhood throughout the Western world — that’s millions of photographic images of very much the same thing. Different people, but the same image.

Even in an ideal world, let’s say your photo albums are a welcome inherence for your son or daughter, and they carefully save the old images for their children. By the time their children grow-up sufficiently to appreciate these images, several things would have changed. First, the technology will be different. Their generation will likely view these old paper and plastic-backed images as something very odd as compared with the AI generated camera-free electronic images with which they are familiar.

Second, these adult children will live in a very different world in which image marketing will likely have shifted to AI imagery and the “convenience” of producing camera-free images, or at the very least AI-mediated images. In this situation, it will be the rare third generation individual who looks over the dusty inherited family albums with much appreciation.

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At the essence of every photograph is a simple existential statement about the individual behind the camera: “I was there.” “I existed.” “I was a good father.” “I was an individual with a unique perspective.” And so on. The assumption is that the image will continue to exist long past the photographer’s demise. If you feel you need to make such statements, then by all means, photograph at will!

Or if you find photography a creative medium, then I invite you to enjoy it. And if you wish to grow your creativity, you may need to challenge yourself. There are numerous creative avenues with photographic media, whether film or digital, from the hyper-realistic to the visually abstract. Visit a modern art museum to experience many of the variations.

But if you wish to create photographic images of family to survive from one generation to another, think again. Similarly, if you find yourself physically present at some exotic location, my advice? Put the camera away and enjoy the view.

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Vic Caldarola is the founder and lead facilitator of the Shine a Light Men’s Project, a men’s mindfulness discussion program. He holds a PhD in Communications Studies.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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