The Future of Photojournalism — Robots?

Couple of related thoughts here. First, way back in the medium’s early days photographers were told there was no “art” in what they did, right? It was just a matter of pushing the button on a machine? Any mouth-breather with a pinky up his or her nose could do that?

One response was to emphasize the control actual human persons exercised: choose the film/process, set the lights, choose the angle, choose the lens. and so on. That’s all still applicable, in a sense, though in this robo-setup more of the choice is pushed up toward editors.

But wait! There’s more. On a microlevel, our granddaughter’s annual elementary school photos were terrific. Why? Not just because the photographer knew how to choose a set, put the correct lights at the correct angles, etc. What really mattered what this this photographer understood kids and knew how to interact with them.

Same on a larger political level. Remember Karsh’s famous portrait of Churchill? with the “stare-down frowny-face”? Karsh said that he got that look by insisting Churchill remove his infamous cigar from his mouth. What do we lose when that connection vanishes?

Bruce Sterling gave a short talk on the future of the camera in which he posited a device he could put on a tabletop that would record everything in the area, including sound and possibly other non-visual signals with algorithms that allow 360 and 3D modeling to fill in what isn’t directly recordable, like the back of heads.  What happens when the tech makes media automatic is the editing hand, eye, and brain and perhaps that will be all of us at once (in some circumstances).