The new photography

Over previous months I’ve attended two concerts. This is unusually social for me. I got a band-promoting t-shirt at one of them, and the opportunity of observing my fellow humans at both. I was struck by two things: 1) if bands are going to charge so much for their t-shirts they should make them out of decent quality material; 2) the number of photographs being taken during the performances.

Re #2, this seemed excessive. One person took >10 shots during one song (I stopped counting after that). Assuming that the photos were taken as an aid to future memory, I couldn’t help but wonder how having >10 almost identical photos is better than having 1 or 2. Now multiply that by the number of songs played….. Everyone seemed to be snapping continuously, even incessantly. It was relentless. Flashes exploded in every direction as people snapped images of the stage, their friends, themselves and themselves photographing the stage.

It struck me that my original assumption was wrong. People weren’t taking these photos as, or merely as, an aid to future memory. For a large part of the audience, taking photos was an essential part of the experience itself. Considering that an individual might have snapped close to, or more than, 100 shots, how many of these images would ever be looked at? How many will be discarded, deleted?

It’s difficult for me to interpret this. But it’s interesting to think how technology effects our social behaviour and our expectations of events.

This is one aspect of the new digital culture that I don’t get. For me, photographs capture moments of our lives and provide us with evidence of our past. At the same time I generally find it annoying to stop whatever it is I’m doing in order to create this evidence. It breaks the flow. So I don’t understand photography so intertwined with life that it becomes part of what you’re doing.