Photography Overload?

An interesting discussion on the Blog-O-Sphere between Jorg Colberg and Alec Soth about seeing too much contemporary photographic work being problematic for one's vision.

Alec's take:

I once had an assistant, Phillip Carpenter, who said something I'll never forget. Phil started off as a musician in Nashville. He was surrounded by a ton of talent and learned about everything going on. But this knowledge, he said, was eventually damaging. Phil explained that the best musicians often come from nowhere. They are in their parent's basement in Idaho, don't really know how to hold the guitar, and consequently develop their own peculiar sound.

So here is the question: If limitation spawns creativity, is the limitless resource of the Internet a good thing? Does it do more harm than good to read all these blogs?

Jorg's take:

What I want to argue is that the inherent flexibility and openness of the internet needs to extend beyond what you can find on the internet: Just like how "a blog" really is just some sort of format that can be filled in many different way, how anyone digests (if you think "consumes" is the right word, you might want to think again) blogs needs to depend on each person's personal preferences. If reading lots of blogs drives you nuts, simply don't do that. If you can't get enough dig right in.

Personally, I tend to go both ways. Sometimes, with all the amazing work that I come across, it charges my creatives juices and gets me thinking in ways outside my norm, forcing me to try new things and go as a photographer. Other times, I go out and I to make photographs and all I can see is people's styles and it can be frustrating.

The difference I feel between the blogs that they discuss and the mailing list we have here, is the strong vibrant community that shares, critiques and generally supports one another which is worth it's weight in gold.

25 December 2008 by Zac Goodwin

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