William Henry Talbot, photographing (or should I say calotyping) Articles of China started a new trend – use captured image not for aesthetic pleasure only, but for practical use as well. Nothing really changed since then: as soon as opportunity presents itself, we use camera to inventory our memories in order to remind ourselves of the past experiences and to share them with others. It doesn’t matter that the picture was taken with a cell phone, that it is blurry and with messed up white balance as long as it serves this purpose.
Roberta Smith is arguing that looking at the scene through the screen of the phone any different then looking at the scene through the viewfinder of SLR camera so much that it is “changing the look of photography”. Well… in my opinion it depends on what photography we are talking about. I don’t see any difference between collecting images of memories or images of China. Both inventories are not pieces of art, and so, it doesn’t really matter how that picture is acquired.
But even if we try to make the art out of the collection, like Bayard did in his Self-Portrait with Plaster Casts, neither of two cameras (daguerreotype or calotype) offered a SLR type viewfinder; so, by Roberta’s reasoning, the look of photography was changed long ago.
It is true though that SLR cameras produce better quality results, but when we speak of art, quality doesn’t always equal aesthetic appeal.
