There are millions, probably billions, of images on the Flickr website. They run the gamut from the sublime to the idiotic. It is a picture library sans catalog—a de facto giant screen and projector and anyone can be the projectionist.

On Flickr there are no editors, art directors, researchers, photo-librarians, historians, theorists, philosophers, or social anthropologists who shape and order its content. It is an enormous jumble of digital images. In its way it is a perfect demonstration of democracy. Everyone can participate. Everyone can contribute, show and tell. It is a virtual universe of images, mostly shown out of context. Some are superb. Most are snapshots. A very few are serious photographs. I am a member of Flickr and I find it alternately fascinating, educational, entrancing and disturbing.

It is the generalized lack of context I find disturbing. Viewing a photograph without knowing the context in which it was made invites facile analysis at the expense of meaningful interpretation, comment and discussion. It suggests that a photograph is only something to be looked at and not something to be studied—something retinal not intellectual.

But when a photograph is presented and viewed out of context only its formal elements, composition and novelty will command attention. The story the photograph was intended to tell and the truths it was intended to point to will not be known.

As an example consider Robert Capa’s famous photographs of the D-Day landing of the allied forces on Omaha beach in World War Two. They cannot compare in technical excellence, novelty or composition to a typical studio shot done by Annie Leibovitz. Yet in context Capa’s images are exceptional photographs. They are visual records of his actual experience of that event, made as he was being shot at! They are authentic and meaningful—filled with information and questions that go well beyond what is captured in the frames. They provoke both thought and emotion. They are photographs not snapshots—indelible images not mere flickers. 

No photograph can be properly understood divorced from the context in which it was made. Likewise, every photograph is a political, cultural, historical and aesthetic statement (even the snapshot)—it is always something to be read and interpreted. Not just seen.

In fact the photograph is never just seen. It is perceived, based upon what the viewer has learned—the conventions of his or her culture, education and upbringing. The viewer cannot perceive the history in a photograph if he or she does not come to that photograph already knowing that history. Capa’s photographs of soldiers falling in the surf could be from a movie, if the viewer does not know they are in fact photographs of real men falling and dying on Omaha beach.

Indeed a photograph may be worth a thousand words. However, it is the rare photograph that can stand without a few words to explain its context. The danger with Flickr is that it encourages the popular perception that photographs are simple ephemera, the equivalent of intellectual fast food. In fact they are the art and record of our time. They are the reflection of who and what we are and what we are becoming. They demand not only to be seen but also read—if we can and will. 

Garage Works 1936 by Walker Evans, courtesy of the Library of Congress

Fine photography is literature and it should be.” Walker Evans 

Consider the context of this image by Walker Evans. It is 1936 and America is still in the throes of the Great Depression. The sign (Evans was enamored of signs) prominently features the words, Cherokee and work, and to a lesser degree the word “used”. What is their significance? What had happened to the Cherokee? And what was then happening to work in America? Who was being used and by whom? What is the apparent attitude of the women in this picture? How are they dressed? Where are they looking?

Not only is this photograph a beautiful composition it is a story that points beyond the image. It is an exquisite combination of context, craft and art in the service of and search for truth. This is an enduring photograph. It is not a flicker.

© Michael Maurer Smith 2009

Lemon, Alstromeria and Frost, © Michael Maurer Smith 1991

Like most photographers, I have made the transition from film to digital—at first grudgingly—but now I accept the inevitability and embrace the new creative opportunities it brings. However, I lament some of the changes.

Since a digital image file is comprised of code, it is infinitely alterable. Using programs like Photoshop, the photographer can adjust the file to suit his or her preferences no matter how outrageous. Colors can be changed, items removed or added, hue, and saturation adjusted, and multiple special effects applied. However, this is not really photography. It is illustration—the intentional building of an image over time based on personal preferences, adding and subtracting from the image to suit the maker’s taste. In contrast, traditional photography is predicated on capturing a single moment and not the building, rebuilding and altering of that image over a period of hours, days or weeks.

Of course, digital photography can be practiced like traditional film-based photography. However, this requires the photographer to commit to a set of self-imposed limitations—often based upon a code of ethics, like those of the National Press Photographers Association or the North American Nature Photographers Association.

However, most digital photographers find the illustrative possibilities irresistible and this is evident in the popularity of the high dynamic range technique, and other reality-enhancing techniques commonly seen on photo-sharing sites like Flickr.

The result is a world inundated with billions of photo-like illustrations and fewer and fewer straight photographs. Since just about everyone with a digital camera and a computer has altered their own image files many assume that every photograph they see is similarly altered and enhanced. Consequently, photojournalism is close to dead, and no one trusts a photograph anymore.

© Michael Maurer Smith 2009