I shot Yukako holding a hot dog in like 2005 or six. It was during our first trip back to NYC after moving to HNL. I can’t remember where we were but its late night and I had a wave of nostalgia. I guess it was from the recent March issues of Bazaar and Elle mags I found downstairs the other night. I paged through them looking at photo credits and didn’t recognize any of the new names in the magazines. Photo big shots like Burbridge, Meier, and McDean were all replaced by unknown names. Probably young guys with photoshop skills and computer visions.
Digital has opened the world to anyone who has a camera and a computer. So many people are creating work all over the world which was once only done by by a select few in New York. The once iconic names of photography are being knocked over by the masses. What attracted me to photography was the elitism of a small clan of professionals who set the bar high and limited those who could enter their ranks. Maybe not so much attracted me but more frustrated me as I sat on the fringe once as an assistant…hoping for that break to assist the elites. No amount of trying helped as it seemed more a trivial game based on whims and so and so’s. New York was good for that. Maybe I just didn’t know it at the time.
Feels like anyone with a camera now is a professional. The barrier is lower and the work is, I dare to say, improving. Indeed, but hints of banality creep off the pages as photoshop filters and plug ins are taking over where skill with lighting, cameras, and film once danced harmonically.
Everyone now is a hot dog. But are they tasty?