THE SOUND OF NO HANDS CLAPPING

By MICHAEL PERKINS

I’VE HEARD A LOT OF HYSTERICAL HAND-WRINGING LATELY over whether anyone can still be a photographer is the age of artificial intelligence, as if the decision were solely in technology’s hands. I believe all this panic is wrong-headed; Art makes a grave error when it assumes that it can be nullified by any force outside the artists him/herself. Creative energy begins within and explodes outward. Its conception is private, sacred and inviolable.

What happens to intellectual property once it lands in the marketplace, legally or otherwise, is a different matter. Battles will be fought, and are being fought (talking to you, Screen Actors’ Guild), to protect a creator’s right to the publication of or profit from his/her work, and that’s as it should be. But while we’re fighting those battles, let’s observe what has happened to the integrity of the photographer already, in just the short space since the dawn of digital and social media.

Conduct your symphony for an audience of one. That’s the only one that matters.

We post and publish constantly, as if that’s all there is to making ourselves “photographers”. We make ourself slaves to approval, spending as much or more time pursuing likes and reposts than we did in the generation of our work. We’ve somehow adopted the idea that all this gratuitous praise will make our work stronger, more “authentic”; worse, we’ve come to embrace the notion that the world is breathlessly waiting for our pictures. Both ideas are demonstrably wrong.

If you’re going to be a photographer, then you must carry your own water. Own your concepts and execute them as best you can, but be prepared to be their only champion. No one is waiting for your next picture, and no amount of self-promotion can improve even a single image if you mangled either the concept or the execution of it. You must concentrate on the making of the picture first, last, and always. You must also face the fact that your best work may have no other jury than yourself, and be okay with that. The poet spoke of “the sound of one hand clapping”, but we must also be content with the sound of no hands clapping.

What makes this all worth re-stating is that worrying about someone (or some thing) stealing your work in the Age of A.I. is a non-issue unless the stuff is worth stealing in the first place. And just as in the case of social media, Art that is produced merely for approval is just pandering. For most of us, the work will have to be enough. Those of us lucky enough to emerge from the pack will find, just as we did in the earlier days of mass production, Xerography and Photoshop, ways to ensure that our pictures remain our work, and ours alone.