Photography at the Crossroads

     In this writing by Berenice Abbott, there is a lot of emphasis on the rapid growth of photography and how much the camera and photos take up peoples lives today. In the beginning of the article, she stated that "The picture has almost replaced the word as a means of communication." I believe this to be true because photography has been taken up in so many different categories of our lives. Whether it's to keep record of an activity or your family or to advertise a new car that's coming in 2015 photography is now playing a huge hand in how we live our lives everyday. She also said that photography can easily recreate the living world around us and of our time because the camera is capturing "the now". But she also says that photography is where it is now because of where it started and who put the time into warping it. There was a good point in the article that described the U.S. as being fascinated with the new technology when it came out and pushing the process and device to the extremes and this is something that Europe lacked. But when they saw what was being produced in the U.S., they loved it. This grew the attraction to the camera and what it could make which has shaped where photography is at today. If people were less interested in the beginning, then our lives would be very different and probably wouldn't be based around imagery everywhere we go. But because of the progression that people have made with it, we are now living in an extremely graphic and photogenic world. Anything can be captured now with a camera which can also be a downside. Abbott talked about the fact that as more and more people gain the ability to take photos, subject matter may become less important because the action of capturing the now is so available. It may make certain places and times less special because there could be hundreds of other people with the same photo. People have become less selective with their subject matter which makes the photos unimportant. Photograph's were created to make a statement, and that should continue to be the way that people make their images.