The Focal Press Companion to the Constructed Image in Contemporary Photography

Introduction

the State ofPhotography, theStatus of Photographs

Natalie Zelt

I keep an active file in my office labelled “Fate of Photography.” It is a slapdash repository filled with articles and citations I come across while researching the recent history of this young medium. The moments of discord catalogued range from articles and exhibition catalogues published in the last decades of the 20th century to more recent Facebook comments, podcasts, and blog posts. Each echoes similar questions and anxieties about the status and meaning of the photograph. Nicholas Mirzoeff ‘s declaration that photography died “sometime in the 1980s at the hands of computer imaging” is included, along with lamentations by the likes of Joel Snyder, who noted, in ...