April 26, 2008

Virginia Heffernan’s essay in this weekend's The New York Times Magazine explores the new aesthetics of digital photography as practiced and perfected on the photo-sharing Web site, Flickr. Some of the top amateur digital-photo auteurs, says Heffernan, “have mounted a case against verite rawness, in favor of posing, cropping and special effects. . . . Just as certain ne’er-do-well writers have found themselves in blogging, and failed filmmakers have taken to online video, these seemingly out-of-step artists have both invented and mastered the Flickr photograph. Other photographers have added still more levels of processing – including otherworldly contrasts achieved with high-dynamic-range photography – to the quintessential Flickr image, and it’s becoming only more eye-popping and stylized.”

Yet again, the message is: In this PhotoShop world, woe is photojournalism.