Walking Away From Photography Writing
For seven years, I’ve written about photography here on Medium. It’s been amazing. More than anything, writing about it has a been companion to doing it. A document of sorts. But these days, I struggle to add to the discussion. In truth, I’ve probably carried on with it longer than I should have. A year ago I noticed a drop in engagement — some of which I chalked up to varying desires from Medium itself, but also a sea change in engagement for the subject. Not for entirely bad reasons, either.
I think, in some ways, everyone really is a photographer now. It’s as if everyone went to photography school together for the last four years and, for the most part, society is now filled with a whole bunch of talented graduates. And this has meant that photography writing, as a whole, has a dwindling audience. Very rarely am I able to impart anything that doesn’t seem available in some other form. And nor do I read anything that seems new on the subject. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that, after 25 years of writing about photography, DP Review is laying off employees and shutting its doors at the same time as I write this.
Dare I say, photography — as a subject — is just kind of played out. How many times do we need to talk about something’s “democratization” before the…
