Joseph Nicephore Niepce took the first photo in 1826.
In 2022, we’ll take approximately 4.7 billion per day and 1.72 trillion per year. The devices we call smartphones today could plausibly, and maybe more accurately, be called smartcameras because they account for 92.5% of those photos.
Your camera rolls contain your story. You are the subject or the direct observer for each of the thousands of photos on your device. As you scroll through, they tickle your emotions with fondness, humor, or sadness.
But how many are iconic?
Some photos are iconic because they don’t require us as the subject or direct observer. They have the power to mesmerize us as if we were. They provide photo-realistic glimpses into a moment we didn’t personally witness. We respond viscerally as if it was on our own cameral roll.
This is the way it looked. The image caught in time.
Paradoxically, iconic photos are actually abstract representations, even though they are the very definition of a realistic representation.
The problem is context.
A photo that strikes our emotions does so because of what we bring to it. We superimpose personal baggage or tribal baggage over the image to interpret the meaning or the action. We create backstory, story for the moment, and then a story for the aftermath. The story gives it meaning.
But it’s our story, not the story of the subjects or the observer in the photo.
Sometimes we get it right, and sometimes we get it wrong.
