I came across a quote earlier this week and thought that this might be good to open up to discussion.

There are too many images, too many cameras now. Were all being watched. It gets sillier and sillier. As if all action is meaningful. Nothing is really all that special. Its just life. If all moments are recorded, then nothing is beautiful and maybe photography isn’t an art anymore. Maybe it never was.

? Robert Frank

Frank was quite known for his noncommercial work around the USA, although he was a commercial photographer for a part of his life.

His iconic and history changing photo book, The Americans, released around 1958, had severely deviated from the norms of photography in his day.

Today, you’d look at the images he shot as a precursor to modern street photography, capturing America’s culture in a different light, but back then, the style of images were unheard of.

I guess you could say that his style is what paved the way for what we would perceive as today’s modern images and perhaps most of the images found on Instagram; that is being free, slightly careless, and lacking respect for compositional rules, while adding feeling and creating a divergent yet accepted aesthetic for photos.

Robert Frank, apparently had shared this quote recently. “Recently” meaning during this time where cameras are readily available and 200,000 pictures are uploaded to Facebook per minute…

How do you feel about this quote as the world gets closer and closer to documenting every moment?
So, is photography still an art? Was it ever?

Tell me what you think.