Shifting Paradigms

Museum and art galley policy sets are the measuring sticks of their contemporaneous relevance. So it is no surprise that it may turn out that ‘photography policies’ are indicators of not only an institution’s intended purposeful sustainability but also the extent to which it is up with the game internationally.

In a little over 170 years photography, along with the technologies that facilitate it, has evolved into perhaps humanity's most dynamic communication device. Its social cum cultural relevance is no longer seriously questioned and its credibility in a 21st Century context is now well understood.

Photographic imagery pervades almost every aspect of current communication strategies. Imagine a newspaper without photographs. Likewise, imagine the level of your comprehension of world events without photographic imagery – static & moving.

Since post WW2 in particular photographic imagery has struggled to win a place for itself at the high table of cultural production. At the same time photography became increasingly pervasive and an omnipresent element of popular culture. That is so albeit that there may be something of a smell of illegitimacy in the air when it turns up in mixed company. 

The paradigm shift that seems to be close to being realised is for almost every technosavy person to be bionically equipped with a photographic device that enables the telepathic communication of ideas. If this point has not yet been reached the analogue precursors for it are there and in use.