The Value of Photography

The recent curiosity regarding classic photography may be a symptom of our beleagued economy. In pre WW2 Europe stamp collecting became a method for storing value efficiently - binding value into small, near weightless paper which was easily ported, smuggled and identified. After the war the transfer began to larger works of art which could be verified authentic or books or even pulp comic books which are now authenticated, graded and sealed, never to be read again.So the process has now begun with photographs. Reproducible with the right chemicals and a negative in the dark. Great lengths have gone into the verification process and collectible photographs, certainly guaranteed to deteriorate in light over time a handled only with spotless white gloves,I have previously written about the copyright and "first edition" problem of digital books. Now we turn to consideration of digital images. First these collections of binary code are proliferating at an exponential and accelerating rate. They are the business plan support for vast storage farms and disk drive makers. We want to send these images - somewhere - ever faster. Witness the new USB 3 standard. Who will look at them all? More importantly, who will have time to "read" these photographs - because great photographs are meant to be read. Not only might they be cauldrons of wealth but also repositories of ideas. A photograph has the quality to transport the "reader" to a time and place the reader has never been. The photographer was there and the reader was not. The reader can at least grasp the visual sense of the place and understand part of the action. An Aleut may never been to a baseball game, but the picture of the "shot heard round the world" would compel more than a passing glance. A Brooklyn subway rider may never have been in a kayak circumnavigating ice flows..... The photographer can also use the technical to produce an image that none of us can "see" with the help of that device; a pin pricking a balloon, a horse running with all hooves off the ground, the eye of an insect. But most importantly the "reader" can see into the mind of the photographer as the photographer imagined the picture, set the camera and executed the photo. A direct 1 to 1 transport of idea through image. I have posted over 4,000 photos to http://www.flickr.com/lhcurtis and only averaged 1.5 views per picture. What is the value of this many years' collection of photographs? As images very personal. As ideas, I hope a wealth. As a personal archive it has value to me - value as a history - value as an expression of my own inner vision of the world through which I move. What is the intrinsic value of a photograph? I would proffer that it is what the viewer/reader perceives it to be. Sphere: Related Content