Photography’s Secular Decline: Part 2

Let us eat cake

This is the second part of a too-long essay about the future of photography. If you haven’t already, I recommend reading part one here.

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Lest you think I’m worried about artificial intelligence replacing photography, I’m not. Same outcome, different threat.

In his Process newsletter, photographer

Wesley Verhoeve

recently published an interview with Dan Gaba, photo editor of the Wall Street Journal. It’s a great read, helpfully aimed at providing working photographers with insights about how a photo editor at a major newspaper likes to receive pitches. It’s a genuinely helpful piece and a must-read for working photojournalists.

Process 112 ☼ How To Pitch A Newspaper

Contained in that interview, though, are some nagging concepts hinting at an inevitable, unpleasant future. Namely, that we photographers are already living in a video world. 

“Video and multimedia are very important,” photo editor Gaba says. “Video content tends to command higher advertising rates than other formats, making it important for publications. Having video capabilities is a great asset for us because, for publications like ours, mobile platforms are key. Most readers read The Journal on their phones via our app. So visuals should be optimized for mobile viewing. If you can provide video content that complements a story, it's incredibly valuable.” 

This makes perfect sense, of course, but it also spells out a harsh reality. Say you’re concerned for the future of your medium, for instance, and equally concerned for your ability to earn a living as a photographer. This advice is helpful, no doubt, but troubling nonetheless. 

When newspapers such as the Wall Street Journal were first printed on paper, the visual medium of choice was drawing and illustration. Then, once technology allowed it, and because it was more effective and valuable, it shifted to photography. 

But as I have covered ad nauseum, and as Gaba mentions above, printed periodicals are rapidly losing steam as commercially viable means of mass communication. News is no longer consumed on paper, it’s delivered via screens—smartphones, of course, and computers and tablets and VR headsets and whatever silicon wafer eventually gets implanted into our visual cortex. Because screens have supplanted paper, video is supplanting stills. Read it again in that quote above: video commands higher advertising rates than other formats. I learned in journalism class one tenet above all others: follow the money. Video already has the commercial edge, and it’s only going to increase. 

In my experience, the free market has a 100% success rate when it comes to getting what it wants. And what it wants today, and will demand tomorrow, is video. No matter how artful a photograph may be in its depiction of decisive moments, old media and TikTok agree the money is in moving pictures streamed to phones and tablets. The audience wants it, the advertisers fund it, so we are going to get more video at the expense of photography. Hell, maybe even at the expense of text. Soon all content may just be one thing: a ceaseless stream of video piped directly into our brain/computer interface. 

There is little chance we will get this video future in addition to photography. We’re going to get it in lieu of photography. The market has spoken. Capitalism is undefeated. Photography has already begun its slow march to second fiddle. It has entered its secular decline. 

“So what,” you may say, “photographers just need to add this video skill to their repertoire and they’ll get paid more.” Sure, fine. Maybe someday it will work that way, but by then you won’t even need to do the photography portion of your skillset. Video alone will suffice. And until then? Per the above interview, for now you just do more and don’t get paid for it. 

“Q: And this extra content is then compensated separately?

A: No, but it does add to the attractiveness of the photographer if they can provide that. It’s by no means a necessity, but it's a really nice bonus.”

A really nice bonus for the newspaper, and the publisher, and the advertiser. But for the photographer? No way. If we add an entire additional art form to our current deliverable, we won’t get paid a penny more but we will be more likely considered for the slim pickings currently on offer. Let us eat cake. 

To be clear, I’m not mad at the Wall Street Journal, and certainly not at the genuinely well-intentioned photo editor quoted above. It’s simply capitalism at work. Market forces are demonstrating that this beloved art form I have studied for so much of my life is less valuable and increasingly unlikely to be subsidized—i.e. it is actively going away. And I don’t see anybody talking about it. So I think I am allowed to be a little bummed out.

The market shows that video is more desirable than photo, period.¹ Photography is already in the process of being made obsolete. Every photo you’ve seen on your phone could just as easily be a video. And once the economic system clicks fully into place, it absolutely will be. 

Today the Wall Street Journal favors photographers who can additionally provide video at no additional charge. Who’s to say that tomorrow, once that balance has shifted past the point of no return, that it won’t be hiring videographers who can throw in a few photographs too? Which sure sounds like the last stop before, “No, that’s okay, we only need the video.”

The Futurist

Today I had lunch with a futurist. Yes, that is a job you can have, and yes, lunchtime conversations with futurists are especially interesting when you’ve got a pressing concern about the future of, say, the medium from which you derive both considerable joy and your livelihood. The futurist explained one way I might proactively consider possible outcomes is to establish what a single future might look like—a media world absent still photography, for instance—then ask myself what I might do in such a future situation. If an artifact from that future were presented today—a smartphone that no longer shoots stills, let’s say—it might help you better understand the realities of that future and how to navigate them. Theoretical future you can look back and identify what steps allowed you to get from here to there, and current you can use those steps as a path to success. 

In more practical terms, this idea means if I consider a future in which still photography is no longer a meaningful part of the media landscape, what has replaced it is likely video (with a clear assist from AI). And if future me knows video has taken over, present me can dedicate myself to building my video skills so that future me can remain gainfully employed. Easy peasy. 

Except I don’t want to see photography marginalized. Maybe we replace careers in photography with careers in AI prompt engineering and motion graphics and video production. So be it. But what if in the future nobody cares about photography? 

Aside from the commercial implications, there’s the matter of the artistic void. Our culture will suffer from the loss of photography. I suppose what may happen is the same thing that always does, as with printmaking and oil painting and ceramics. Maybe it will be appreciated the same way as film photography and vinyl records, a charming artifact from a quaint past. I wonder, though, is that enough? And if not, is there anything can we do about it?

1. Just not so much more desirable that photographers should be paid more to provide it.