Who decides what photographs we see? Are we losing important photographic voices as editors, art buyers, curators, publishers, art jurists and gallerists become the arbiters of which photographers deserve to be seen? Are we witnessing the homogenization of the photographic medium? What is being done to assure that myopia does not govern accessibility to diverse points of view?
Recently there have been several occasions that brought to mind the slow but steady filtering of talent that goes on in our medium. A filtering that removes and edits the work of talented artists from our view and in so doing perhaps silences their public voices forever. Because of this these artists may never get the chance to inspire, challenge or provoke us. I find this sad but perhaps unavoidable as a function of the shear volume of imagery to be seen. The issue then is not so much that editing occurs but how best to go about deciding who does the editing and what criteria is used so that we will be assured of a broad, vital and diverse pool of talent now and in the future.
In the past several decades we've witnessed vast changes in the way photography is disseminated. Some changes have helped expand our view and others not so much. This is of course a broad subject and one in which I can only scratch the surface here. But I look forward to your comments and observations as they will serve to round out our understanding of how this filtering occurs, what its long-term affects might be and how we might make adjustments so as to expand rather than narrow our view of the world.
More to come...
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