Photographic Glut

This year more than 1.8 trillion photographs will be taken worldwide. In just the last two years more photographs have been taken than in the whole history of photography prior to that. 57,000 photographs are taken every second, 100m selfies every day. The smartphone is, of course, the generator of these extraordinary statistics. I alone have over 70,000 photos on my iPhone, a ridiculous state of affairs that I will have to address, (the majority of these images will never be looked at again).

Photography after the introduction of the smartphone

The quality of smartphone pictures has made carrying a camera almost redundant, they are simple to edit and easy to use on the various social media platforms that seem central to our lives. However, it is not without a cost. The amount of storage needed for all the photos taken in the UK equates to a staggering 355,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide per annum (the equivalent of a car driving 2,500,000,000 km).

What was it like before we all carried a smartphone? Many years ago, I knew a photographer, Clive Boursnell, who documented the final days of the Covent Garden Fruit and Vegetable market. His black and white images of London in the early 1970’s capture a pre digital city, a scruffy, noisy, funny city of social and economic contrasts, a culture that the closing of the market wiped out overnight.

Clive also used to teach photography, one of his lessons was to give each student a roll of 35mm film with 12 exposures (film was 12, 24 or 36 exposures). They were sent out for a day and tasked with taking 12 good photographs. Unlike digital photography there is no second chance, you cannot review the image and retake it, you had to weigh up all the variables and go for it, the results would only become apparent in the dark room. Not only did that make the job a lot harder it added value to the image, it meant that you really thought about what you needed to record and did not waste expensive film. The exact opposite of smartphone photography.

Most nights I cycle past a small bookshop just off the Portobello Road, there are almost always 10 -15 tourists photographing it and taking selfies. They mistakenly think it was the book shop in Richard Curtis’s film 'Notting Hill', which was in fact situated on Portobello Road itself. Around the corner on Lancaster Road, residents who used to paint their houses in bright and contrasting colours have started to paint over them in black to deter the tourists and “influencers” who see their homes as a public stage set to be used a s a back drop for their Instagram and TikTok feeds, as well as a place for a picnic or wedding shoot.

The tyranny of the smartphone is everywhere. Watch people in galleries, most don’t look at or read a painting, they often take a snap of it and move on, at concerts the audience is a sea of smartphones held high like Chairman Mao’s red books. Some artists have had enough, for example, Nick Cave, Bob Dylan and notoriously Keith Jarrett, who would walk off stage if a camera flashed, all want their art to be experienced, absorbed and enjoyed, not recorded.

It is a curious state of affairs. Enabled by tech we live in a digital age that values experience over authenticity. Cheap flights, airbnb and social media have combined to turn our cities, natural wonders and archaeological sites into overcrowded photo opportunities on the grand tour of our life. Perhaps it is time to stop, to look and think, to create memories rather a digital record that we will probably never look at again.