Photography

Two days ago, in The Photography That Disappeared, I traced what the smartphone did to the economics of the image—attention diluted, the photograph commodified, the decisive moment traded for burst mode. That essay stayed deliberately clinical, and it closed with a promissory note: at the risk of sounding Freudian, or Jungian, there is a second function of photography that has nothing to do with art, and I would come back for it. This is me coming back for it. …

At a private event not long ago, I lined up what felt like the perfect shot. The light was doing something rare, the composition had assembled itself, and the moment was about to peak. Then, in the same instant, a dozen smartphones rose in front of me. Not out of malice—out of reflex. A wall of glowing rectangles, each capturing the same scene from nearly the same angle, each producing an image that would be indistinguishable from its neighbors. The photograph I was about to take became redundant before it existed. …