Wim Wenders, the iPhone, and the Tragic Demise of an Art Form
Smartphones have accomplished what centuries of technical advancements couldn’t: they’ve killed photography. Yes, you heard it right. The art of capturing moments, emotions, and stories through a lens is dead. The perpetrator? None other than the iPhone. Renowned filmmaker and photographer Wim Wenders have declared photography “more dead than ever,” and the irony is palpable.
The trouble with iPhone pictures is nobody sees them.
We’ve all become trigger-happy, photo-taking maniacs, snapping away as if our lives depended on it. But what good is it when the result is nothing more than a fleeting moment on a tiny screen, buried in a sea of other forgotten digital memories? Wenders laments, “The trouble with iPhone pictures is nobody sees them. Even the people who take them don’t look at them anymore, and they certainly don’t make prints.”
Remember when a photograph was a tangible object to be cherished and preserved?
It’s a bitter pill to swallow, but our beloved Instagram, with its 60 million photos uploaded daily, has played a crucial role in the assassination of photography. Remember when a photograph was a tangible object to be cherished and preserved? Well, kiss those days goodbye because it’s all about filters and hashtags.
The array of apps and filters available at our fingertips might seem like a creative paradise, but Wenders argues that they’re nothing more than a smokescreen for lack of true creativity. “I know from experience that the less you have, the more creative you have to become,” he says, alluding to his Academy Award-nominated documentary, The Salt of the Earth, about photographer Sebastião Salgado.
I’m searching for a new that looks so much like photography but isn’t photography anymore.
Wenders is searching for a new term that encapsulates this superficial, image-crazed world we live in, where a sad facsimile of itself has replaced photography. He pleads, “I’m searching for a new word for this new activity that looks so much like photography but isn’t photography anymore.”
Some have suggested “fauxtography,” but is that enough to satisfy the likes of Wenders, whose work is anything but predictable? Likely not. As we snap, filter, and share our way through life, the ghost of photography’s glorious past haunts us, a cruel reminder of what once was and what might never be again.
Rest in peace, photography. You will be missed.
So, let’s all take a moment of silence for photography, the art form that fell victim to the technology that was supposed to revolutionize it. Ultimately, it was not a revolution but a slow, insidious decline that led to its untimely demise. Rest in peace, photography. You will be missed.