Photography’s Secular Decline: Part 1

First tech companies commoditized photography, now they’re going to kill it

Cameras are not made for photographers any more. Sad but true. We have become ancillary to camera manufacturers’ ideal demographic: videographers and content creators.

Remember when cameras were made for photographers? It was a brief period between 2010 and 2015. Prior to that we “serious” photographers took a backseat in the camera market to a different demographic: regular people. 

Me, my mother and my grandmother with her trusty Kodak Instamatic.

My grandmother owned a Kodak Ektralite 110 pocket camera and weilded it at every family gathering. Nobody would have described her as a photographer, yet when I think about my family’s personal history with photography, it’s my grandma and her Kodak. Millions of grandmas bought billions of cameras and shot countless rolls of film. This was the target demo for camera manufacturers throughout the 20th century.

These days grandmas are perfectly happy to let their smartphones be their cameras. As a consequence, global camera sales seriously tanked over the last decade, a nearly 90% decline from 121 million cameras sold in 2010 to just 15 million in 2019. 

Note that the vast majority of that decline is in fixed-lens cameras—the models made for regular people like my grandma. Interchangeable lens camera sales also dropped, but not nearly as precipitously. These fancier cameras are still selling, but the buyers are less frequently photographers and more often videographers and content creators. With so many kids aspiring to become YouTubers and vloggers, it’s an ideal demographic to target.

The snapshot camera, and therefore the whole of the camera business, has experienced what economists call “secular decline.” There is no longer broad support for the product, plain and simple. Nobody set out to decimate camera sales, but the consequence was the inevitable result of market forces. ¹

Still, photographers need cameras, so we will buy what’s on offer even as the devices are evolving away from us.

Ten years ago, a photographer purchasing a camera (for their hobby, their side hustle or their profession) was likely purchasing a DSLR—the digital version of the old-school single lens reflex 35mm camera. Soon, though, camera makers (notably Sony) innovated with mirrorless cameras aimed at “serious” photographers. Prior to that time, mirrorless cameras were largely limited to compact, point-and-shoot cameras aimed at the “regular people” demographic. But the new generation of mirrorless bodies delivered pro-caliber features. They were kind of great, actually, at providing the best of several worlds: compact size, amazing image quality, brand new features and cinema style 4k video all in a convenient package. 

The technological advantages of mirrorless bodies soon became clear,² and in the short span of four years between 2018 and 2022, camera manufacturers Nikon and Canon went from introducing their first pro mirrorless cameras to addressing rumors of the imminent demise of the DSLR. These companies doth protest too much that they will continue selling and supporting DSLRs, but one look at their slate of new bodies and lenses shows gear destined for the growing mirrorless market, not the shrinking DSLR market. Shrinking because it is another example of… *cue ominous music*... secular decline. 

The rise of high-quality video in compact, easy-to-use, relatively affordable cameras coincided perfectly with the utter domination of the creator economy via TikTok and YouTube. These platforms have all but eliminated print media and they are well on their way to decimating traditional broadcasting too. So why make cameras for photographers when print is dead and media is shifting to user-generated video?

Planning for Obsolescence

The Roman Empire, which I do not often think about, is a really tremendous example of rapid secular decline. One minute you’re sitting on top of the world, running practically everything practically everwhere, and then boom, some visigoths come over and ruin your day. The 2023 visigoths of which I am most wary³ are the giant tech companies sucking the air out of everything other than streaming and social media. 

The last remnants of print publishing are circling the drain. And I don’t mean to be alarmist but I think television might be next.⁴

Television, that once great boogeyman that our parents warned us about, is now a cultural afterthought. As evidenced by rumors of Disney’s impending unloading sale of the ABC broadcast network, as well as constant tumult between cable TV providers and channels such as another Disney property, the money-makingest cable channel ever, ESPN. 

Cable television has been, for the last 40 years, incredibly profitable. Money may not grow on trees but it falls like rain into the lush gardens of cable television networks. Or at least it did until that system was disrupted by streaming. 

I used to think my kids would grow up with streaming TV as their main digital vice, and while the TV they do watch is delivered by Netflix and Amazon and Roku, even that is an afterthought—a backup plan in case their tablets run out of battery. As I write this, my son is on the couch watching YouTube on a tiny tablet in front of a big, dark television while his sister hides in her room doing the same. Thankfully they sometimes take a break and cleanse their palates. Watching television is the reading books of 2023. 

Like cable TV, lots of very big, very (formerly) profitable media empires are falling at the swords of YouTube and TikTok. It’s become passe in this context to point out that such things are becoming less social and more media, but it’s true! As more of us, especially the youngest among us, watch TikTok in lieu of television, advertisers shift their focus. And it’s a zero sum game. Ad dollars are increasingly spent on TikTok instead of television. 

In 2022, ESPN brought in roughly $2.6 billion in revenue (between advertising and carriage fees) while TikTok earned nearly $12 billion.⁵ Without ad revenue, television networks are certain to fail. Local broadcast channels may stick around in skeleton form, likely as national content with a thin veneer of locality. Then local news completely disappears, along with any semblance of community identity cultivated through shared experience. So, you know, no biggie. 

As much as Charter, Cox and AT&T may wish otherwise, cable TV will soon cease to be. Maybe not in the sense that you won’t be able get TV piped into your house via cable, but it will be a shell of its former self—like Sears, or Kodak, or Twitter. Once you can watch ESPN via $10 streaming subscription, without this linchpin in the cable TV value proposition it’s all over but the shouting. 

At this point you may be asking why does any of this matter to me as a photographer? Because if something as entrenched and profitable as cable television can collapse in the span of a decade, anything can. If such a robust mass media can disappear almost overnight—along with CDs, DVDs, newspapers and magazines—why can’t my favorite medium disappear too?

My favorite medium is photography, and my concern is that as the vehicles for displaying and subsidizing photography disappear, it stands to reason that photography itself is due for a decline. I’m not worried it will be entirely eliminated, but rather that photography will be pushed to the margins with other charming arts and crafts that no longer hold sway in popular culture. 

All of this is to say that I’m worried photography is a 20th century medium that will not survive the 21st.

Consider film photography at the turn of the last century. Film experienced its own sudden secular decline upon the introduction of high quality, low cost digital cameras. Yes, you can still buy film, but it isn’t exactly practical. It’s incredibly expensive and a bit cumbersome, if we’re honest. Don’t get me wrong, film has its charms, but it’s nowhere near the bright center of the photographic universe. Yes, film photography technically still exists, but because the economics no longer make sense it has become all but irrelevant. When I consider photography’s place in our changing cultural landscape, I’m afraid a similar outcome awaits my favorite medium as a whole. 

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Thank you for reading part one of this too-long essay. Tune in next week for part two, in which I will solve all of these problems and more!

1. Interestingly, this particular case is somewhat unique in that a largely inferior product (smartphones) achieved near 100% saturation and entirely eliminated the need for the cameras most families once owned. A side effect here is the proof of the theory that the best camera really is the one you have with you. 

2. These benefits include features like eye-tracking autofocus, silent shooting, and the ability to seamlessly switch between high-megapixel still photography and 4k video. 

3. Well, aside from the threat of broad cultural decline because… *gestures broadly at everything*

4. I’d say “broadcast” in general, but my guess is that radio, by virtue of coming standard with every automobile, will actually continue to have an economically viable use case. At least a longer shelf life than broadcast television, anyway. 

5. TikTok’s rise isn’t just amazing, it’s unprecedented and frankly bonkers. TikTok reached 100 million users in just nine months, but the company’s revenue growth is even more vertical. In 2018 the company brought in $150 million. That doubled the next year, then nearly quintupled to $1.4 billion in 2020. Up again to nearly $4 billion in 2021, and then up triple again to almost $12 billion in 2022. This year it’s expected to top $18 billion, hitting $23 billion in 2024. In case you didn’t study finance, allow me to clarify that these numbers are very good.