In the News: Communicating with Images

Here I Am Taking My Own Picture – New York Times: “The era of cheap, lightweight digital cameras – in cellphones, in computers, in hip pockets, even on key chains – has meant that people who did not consider themselves photography buffs as recently as five years ago are filling ever-larger hard drives with thousands of images from their lives.”

I’d like to see a more sophisticated analysis of this trend. To what extent is it the technology and how much of it is immediacy and availability? More bothersome to me is this commentary:

“In a funny way I don’t see this as photography anymore,” said Fred Ritchin, an associate professor in the photography and imaging department at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. “It’s communication. It’s all an extension of cellphones, texting and e-mailing.”

The implicit statement there is that images weren’t/aren’t communication. Especially in a School of the Arts, that is such a perposterous statement. There are no messages in visual images?!! Please.