Fig. 1: Students participate in a photography summer school at Central St. Martins – University of Arts London (August 2018)

The global image is all around us: ubiquitous and pervasive. We are bombarded by images. Try walking down the street consciously ignoring every image that you see. Make an effort to delete them from your field of vision. The world quickly becomes uncluttered. It seems that the still image is everywhere, pushed aside only by the multitude of moving images that steal our attention, pulling us in through a kind of animal instinct that focuses on movement.

To continue to gain our attention the global image stretches the boundaries of cultural acceptance before becoming banal or mundane. An alien browsing photographic archives of personal photographies in the second decade of the 21^st Century on planet Earth might be excused for thinking that we are a profoundly communal species sharing moments by peering out of digital slices of time, whether to express, to consume, or perhaps to be consumed. Like fledglings in a nest consciously, or unconsciously, needing to attract attention to survive in a competitive world.

The boundaries of photographic representation once determined, they become the quotidien acceptance of the global image as an unconscious representation of society today. And so the next step in pushing the boundary of photographic representation must arrive and photographies evolve further: continuously flexible temporal networks, or interconnected systems, which interlink visual representations of space, time, reality, imagination and the human condition.

When everything has been photographed what is there left for photographers to do? I remember wanting to visit an exhibition at the Pompidou Centre a few years back, which explored the concept of there being nothing left to photograph. The queue was too long, so I’ve been left with my own thoughts on the possibilities that remain for photography now. Are they endless?

The pervasive nature of photography is not a new phenomenon. Hand (2012) informs us that “the New York Times ran a story in 1884 concerning an ‘epidemic’ of cameras, with amateurs described as ‘camera lunatics’ training their cameras simply on those walking down the street” (Hand: 4). The sociological response to this was similar to today’s concerns about privacy, invasiveness, decency and the breakdown of societal norms.

In the image above a photographer takes an image of photographers talking about photography: this allows for humorous or iconic discourse, revealing aspects of today’s version of this lunacy (Fig. 1: Sutherland 2018).

In another instant, the photographer ‘steals’ a moment of someone sleeping, a private moment in which the person is disconnected from self-consciousness, captured consciously by a photographer using an optical instrument which records unconsciously (Fig. 2: G. Sutherland 2018).

Fig. 2: Sleeping visitor in the National Theatre, Southbank, London represented in IR 590nm post-processed to black & white (August 2018)

Reflecting on my place within the concept of the global image, I again recall lyrics from Coastguard by British Sea Power: “We’re all in it, we’re all in it, we’re all in it and we close our eyes” (British Sea Power 2013).

It seems inherent to photographies as visual expressions of personal or cultural world-views that they concern the boundaries of the socially acceptable. Photographic images have the ability to grab attention, when the written or spoken word can’t be heard above the voices of others. It could be that what is stated visually, has more potency than written language, albeit with less clarity. Perhaps this is because of its ambiguity?

In photographic practice I’m increasingly challenged to remake any image brought into the photographic realm, or saturated as Walter Benjamin would have stated it, from amongst all the concepts of images in the minds of a world of photographers. That said, it can make sense to look at new light through old windows, or to project new considerations of old stories in the light of the (digital) age in which we now live. Times have changed and so have the interpretations.

Fig. 3: Art gallery visitors in the Tate Modern Turbine Hall represented in IR 590nm (August 2018)

The question remains: is there anything new under the sun to photograph? And will it remain ‘new’ once it has come into existence from its previous existence as an idea ready to become a photograph?

For the most part, commercial and art photography today sit both within and aside of the realm of digital photography, which in itself is a sub-culture of digital culture. They sit within it when they conform to its norms, they sit apart when they are breaking those norms. Yet, once they break the norms, they become part of the norm. “The Shape of Light” abstract photography exhibition at the Tate Modern in 2018 was an example of a critically acclaimed and publicly accessible photography exhibition which demonstrated how photography has taken its place with other arts, on a mass scale, as art for awakening conscience and art for consumption (Fig.3: G. Sutherland 2018).

The other part of this sub-culture is personal photography and together they reveal everyday photographic practices, whether production or consumption, which in “contemporary Western cultures involve unprecedented levels of visual mediation” (Hand: 3). Even analogue or alternative photographies rely on digital distribution and consumption, clearly placing photography as a part of today’s digital society.

For my part I interpret the concept of the global image ontologically as the current culture of production and distribution of images through which they pervade every aspect of our life, whether as personal or professional photographies. Photographic image has become an intrinsic part of our existence.

Sources

BRITISH SEA POWER, 2013. Coastguard. In: From the sea to the land beyond [Vinyl]. RTTRDLP679. Rough Trade Records.

Hand, M. (2012) Ubiquitous Photography. Cambridge: Polity Press. ISBN-978-0-7456-4715-9