-
Recent Posts
Categories
- African photography
- American photography
- Art Fairs / Festivals
- Asian photography
- Awards
- Book of the Week
- Book reviews
- Collecting
- Contemporary art
- European photography
- Events
- Exhibition reviews
- Existentialist photo-ramblings
- eyecurious News
- Interviews
- Japanese photography
- Latin American photography
- Magazines
- On a lighter note
- One to watch
- Photo-books
- Photo-journalism
- Projects
- Tangents
Archives
- January 2012
- December 2011
- November 2011
- October 2011
- September 2011
- August 2011
- July 2011
- June 2011
- May 2011
- April 2011
- March 2011
- February 2011
- January 2011
- December 2010
- November 2010
- October 2010
- September 2010
- August 2010
- July 2010
- June 2010
- May 2010
- April 2010
- March 2010
- February 2010
- January 2010
- December 2009
- November 2009
- October 2009
- September 2009
- August 2009
- July 2009
- June 2009
- May 2009
- April 2009
- February 2009
Tumblr
-
RSS
Fresh On My Shelves
The Terrorist's Handbook,
David Schulz
White Noise,
António Júlio Duarte
Things here and things still to come, José Pedro Cortes
Truth and Various Deceptions,
Harvey Benge
Vox Populi: Tokyo,
Fiona Tan
Is this really the future of photography?
© Sam Irons
The Creative Review blog has a post about LPA Futures, a competition designed to “find the next generation of commercial photographers.” The prize: five young photographers get to have their careers “nurtured” by the Lisa Pritchard Agency. There are lots of these awards around these days for young photographers and god knows that they need it as it is certainly not getting any easier to earn a living from photography.
However, I have to say I find the prize-winning images on show here depressing. Individually they are technically proficient, and a couple I even found arresting, but what depresses me is that they could all easily have been taken by the same person (or maybe 1.5 people). I don’t see any diversity in this group: they all have the same cold, detached approach to their subject, whether landscapes or portraits, and convey the requisite “contemporary” emptiness, which has become so omniscient. I even find the treatment of colour remarkably similar by four out of the five photographers here. If this prize really identifies the “next generation,” then the clones are soon going to have their day. I am not aiming my criticims at any of these young photographers, and hope that they will all be nurtured by LPA to great success, but it would be pretty tragic if the future of photography was as homogenous as this.
Related posts: