An interesting read that looks back at how photography was and how it is changing today from the point of view of the photographer Danny Lyon.
I first saw Danny’s photographs in a prison in Huntsville, Texas. I was studying photography in 1971 at Sam Houston State University. The book Conversations With the Dead by Danny Lyon had come out that same year and many if not all of the prints that made up the book where on display in the Walls Unit. Being in the Walls Unit Main Building was weird to this young man because I was just out of high school. Thinking about it now I still think it would be out of the ordinary today.
What I remember thinking about the exhibit was some of these men are somewhere inside this very prison building and some are out in the fields around town in a prison work gang. I wondered if I had walked past any of them or would I some day. It made me feel strange being on the outside looking in.
But to get back to The End of the Age of Photography Danny said “I wonder if I am recreating Frank’s (Robert Frank) error with what I am now writing” talking about how photography is changing. Well maybe because after all what is photography but image making. Good work can and will be made with film or image sensor or whatever is next after the digital method we use today.
Danny said “The real question faced by a photographer or journalist today is not of course the type of film that is inside their camera, although that matters. The real question is what’s inside their head. That has always been the question and will always be the question.” I think this quote by Danny is important to remember as you read the rest of the story.
Robert Heinecken said “The photograph is not a picture of something but is an object about something.” Yes that is correct because you know the Grand Canyon is not able to fit in an 8”X10” print.
The classic wet darkroom is now going the way of other fine print making process such as lithography and intaglio. I too used silver rich Agfa paper back in the 1970’s and will miss other fine papers no longer made. I hope somewhere the unique prints that can be made with the old processes can survive but much of the photography done today does not need the extra work, time and expense to make fine prints the old way. Think: newspapers, websites, CDs and others.
Danny said “People no longer purchase picture books, they “collect” them. The very word implies that they know that we are on the edge of a vanishing world and that their own personal libraries might one day serve as museums. That is truly ominous, for as every street photographer knows, there is nothing as boring as a museum.”
I think he is correct about this because I read somewhere in the future people will look back on our time and not believe we used so much paper. That in our time we used paper plates, read paper newspapers and made individual paper books so you could hold your own copy.
Danny’s article is worth reading. It will make you think about today and the past even if you are too young to know what some of the items are that he is talking about.
The article by Danny Lyon The End of the Age of Photography
This post is about an article over at Danny Lyon’s website www.bleakbeauty.com dated Oct. 20, 2007.
Danny Lyon – The Bikeriders
Dektol a blog by Danny Lyon
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Copyright © 2009 Byron Rogers All rights reserved.
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