The third in the series of the salt-water damaged roll of 35mm film:
I read in The Guardian that Wim Wenders now regards photography as a thing of the past. His argument is this:
“It’s not just the meaning of the image that has changed – the act of looking does not have the same meaning. Now, it’s about showing, sending and maybe remembering. It is no longer essentially about the image. The image for me was always linked to the idea of uniqueness, to a frame and to composition. You produced something that was, in itself, a singular moment. As such, it had a certain sacredness. That whole notion is gone.”
The modernist understanding of photography has gone to be replaced by the network image.
Wenders adds:
"The culture has changed. It has all gone. I really don’t know why we stick to the word photography any more. There should be a different term, but nobody cared about finding it."
How about the networked image?
This acknowledges that the mode of vision and imaging, established through photography over the previous two centuries, has and continues to be radically reconfigured by a hybrid of algorithms, computing, programmed capture and display devices, and an array of online platforms. The image under these new conditions is filtered, fluid, fleeting, permeable, mobile and distributed and is changing our ways of seeing.