With luck I'll get that golden goose...

Fried would be pleased with the amount of quotations used in these essays. As well as I would like to thank inventors of words and meanings for their ability to give the same word different and altering meanings. I know that some of these issues are vague. I didn't want to lay everything out in this and just be restating everything during the discussion.

What is photography? Is it over? The term over has many differing definitions exceeding upward, to cross/change, and to end. With this vague question of is photography over we see it first as a pre-warning or threat as GFR experienced after hanging the classes signs over the school. Even the term “photography” is confused. People use photographic, photo, image, light writing, and, of course, photography all to generally call upon the same thing. The first two definitions of over can be positive and answered shortly simply because it is not needed to discuss them as much in context to all the reprises by the people in the round table discussion at SFMOMA. So I am going to go straight into the negative aspect of the term and bring to light the positive later on.

Lee Frielander: the one man who will live forever.

            I personally connected most with Jennifer Blessing; at first I felt that she was simply accepting some kind of end so it wouldn’t weigh down on her later or that she truly just thought it was over and done with. After reading her statement and a few others I began, like many probably have, to connect positions from all the member’s statements and began to see a possibly non-intended perspective on this question. One question I have yet to grasp (hopefully I will get this answer in our far more superior square table discussion) is what we are dubbing the term photography. Does it refer to the art/commercial form? Scientific? Documentary? Reference? It’s meaning or reasoning? Or it’s input and output mechanisms? When asking this question are we looking at any specific entity of the medium, or whatever you want to call it, or the whole photographic process as a whole? Also if photography is over is the photographic?

            I can’t stop comparing photography to painting when thinking of this question. Looking back at its history I see the broadest changing medium ever existing in our timeline. Look at history, yes the movements changed the styles but the painting is still just as much of a painting today as it was when cave people did it; simply paint on structure. I don’t paint so this is how I see it. This is a far stretch but the only mass change that could occur in painting as has been in photography would be if “color by number” became a smash hit amongst artists, I’ll have to invest for my future millions! The “that has been” has and will never leave the photographic medium (I even feel it so with the mass amounts of digital manipulation that creates images of “that has never been”). The photographic presence is born and transforms constantly but photography is over, in all variety of meaning. Like always it will be reborn with a new connotation; how can it be diminished, for lack of a better term, if everyone uses it. Look at the stasis mediums that surround ours with no ends for which to look. Sculpture, painting, etc. the process is there and is unable to change. But photography with its broad and indefinable existence such a beauty that cant end because people cant even define or pin point it in agreement. This is our main fault. Why are we asking if it is over if we haven’t even asked if it has begun because before something begins we must all know what it is. What would we call it today? With a medium so vast I feel the word is lost in its index. It literally means “light writing” but with artists who create the inexistent in their work there is no light used other than that from the monitor, and lets not go into that version of conceptual bull-shit as light writing. If we were to pronounce the medium as a new foundation of art Tuesday December 7^th, that is our class time CTP people, would we still use photography as the terminology or would it be something completely different?

            Getting back to the issue on hand, kind of, this transformation that has been continuous in our media now has a perspective of media of other realms. Can the inclusion of photo in other media simply be a graphy transformation of art? I believe someone says this, but I could not re-find it… So is photography over, exceeding upwards or across? I believe so. If this “artgraphy” of all mediums using each other, not simply mixed media because that just sounds plain and stupid, we are addressing the notion that this once singular medium has reached across its boarders to all its allies and formed the art media. So with this, if it is understood or correct, we need to answer the question: Is art media over? The photographic already incorporates image-based representations of everything. As well as the Friedian belief of the “to be seen ness” that exists with the tableau form which does exist in Art otherwise it would be Hobby.

Philip-Lorca diCorcia states, “Most predictions are based on technical developments that alter the form more than the content.” So he is looking at the old form of photo, analog vs. digital, in this light rather production based workflow. I believe we need to look past, as many people now do, the format and at the image, whether it is a digital image or “analog” is not the point it is the art, the final outcome, that must reflect the nature of this art in reference to Blake Stimson. I mean any which way one looks at this it is mind blowing and head aching just thinking of the possibilities. These digital elements are also become relevant in who gets to categorize and claim work. With the internet and other media outputs we are seeing the "amateur" or "unqualified" determine the role images play in our culture. Everyone is able to place their work along side others who are noted worth to be before eyes of the wide spread public. I decided to type in several types of photography that came to mind and display images that I first saw:

Topographic Photography

Fine Art Photography

Abstract Photography

Commercial Photography

Fashion Photography

I feel that by separating these types of Photography into these groups, eliminating the connection between the photographic practice as a whole we are weakening our trade. Looking at all theses images together we are not looking at much variation. They are all very similar in regards to being Art. The object is still the object and with photography we are always going to have a single object that connects us no matter what variation our interests lies in.

Maybe the photograph is simply a myth and we are all believing in its ability and practice in hope that it is reproduced endlessly and never end such as a god of sorts. Why don’t we ask if other mediums are over? I think it is because of the “AWESOMENESS” photography has in life. I see this discussion as an obvious determination to broaden the photograph and to try and find it again. Can it not exist without a definition? I feel that this question raises more questions than it answers (a positive notion.)