The future's bright...

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I read an interesting article this week about the 'death of photography', which asked whether camera phones were 'destroying an artform'.

It was prompted by a photograph of Danish prime minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt taking a so-called 'selfie' of herself with Barack Obama and David Cameron at the memorial service for Nelson Mandela.

The article raised a few interesting points. It first of all asked whether press photographers would soon use cameraphones instead of expensive SLRs.

It went on to say that people simply do not remember the things they are photographing, 'making the snap-happy nature of modern photography doubly mindless'.


The suggestion that photography is dying was made by Mexican photographer Antonio Olmos, who said photographers were being destroyed by iPhones - for example, people were taking wedding photos themselves rather than hiring a professional.

But he added that iPhones had such poor lenses, the resultant prints look dreadful. Nevertheless, the article featured Nick Knight, a  professional fashion photographer who has carried out entire assignments with an iPhone.

But what is the truth? What is the future for photography in such an image-saturated age?

I certainly have no time for the suggestion that the medium is dying, and I would look to other art forms for proof. There is probably no more democratic art form than the written word - anyone can pick up a pen or hit a keyboard. But not everyone can write beautiful poetry or pen a Booker Prize-winning novel - and I'm glad to say literature is still very much alive.

In the same way, democratising photography by putting a camera in pretty much everyone's hands produces trillions of images daily, but hardly any will be of the same quality as that produced by Ansel Adams or Don McCullin, for example. There will always be a place (and a demand) for such treasures.

It is no surprise that people simply do not remember the things they snap with their cameraphones on a night out.

But take a photograph of a plate of food using an SLR with a good lens, making sure the lighting is immaculate, composing the image intelligently, and printing it on high-quality paper using the best inks.... and you might have something worth framing.

For there really is no substitute for quality. And although Nick Knight can dismiss the poor quality of an iPhone lens as insignificant, arguing that blurred images are 'no big deal', I suggest his view is very much in the minority.

One of the great pleasures in life is enjoying culture 'up close' - seeing the incredibly vivid colours of an original Renoir at an art gallery, hearing the heavenly harmonies of a choir in a cathedral.

It's the same with photography. The beautifully executed works of Sebastiao Salgado at the V&A, picturing a world under threat, literally took my breath away. I'm not sure a gallery wall lined with fuzzy, poorly composed snaps would have been so impressive.

Yes, I have occasionally been impressed by photos taken with a cameraphone and displayed at exhibitions. The work of award-winning Nettie Edwards at Lacock was particularly good. But she is very much an exception and her work accommodates the cameraphone's limitations rather than attempt to match the detail and tonal range of an SLR.

So, no, photography is not under threat. As long as there are images that truly inspire, the medium will have a future. And those images will more than likely be the result of intelligence, creativity, a mastery of lighting and good lenses. Not cameraphone snaps.