"Is Photography Over?"

Oh man, I'm so excited to hear the audio from this discussion.  SFMoMA is holding a discussion today and tomorrow regarding the present and future of photography and it's state of existence as a valid artistic medium.  They have figures such as Charlotte Cotton (who I forgot to mention I met the last time I was in NY), Walead Beshty (who has a lecture on Monday here at MassArt), Philip-Lorca diCorcia and several others on the discussion committee.  Here's a general post in Foto8 about it as well as initial short responses by all of the panel members.

This is a big deal. As soon as the audio becomes available I'll try and post it on here, I'm sure it'll be monumental.

Also, some thoughts I've been having today.  I've been considering responsibility a lot lately.  What is my responsibility as a photographer and artist versus all the other roles I must divide myself into?  When I photograph, what responsibility to I transfer onto my subjects?  How do I differentiate between the photographs and myself?  I recently read an interview with Garry Winogrand (I've linked a pdf if you'd like to read it) and he stated:

 "What you photograph is responsible for how a photograph looks.  In other words, it's responsible for the form...the design, whatever word you want to use.  Because of that there's no way a photograph has to look, in a sense.  There are no formal rules of design that can apply."

I started thinking of this in terms of my roommate Rachel King's current undergoing.  She has been sending and handing out disposable cameras all over the US to people of varying demographics, personalities, points of view.  She asks them to take a roll of photographs of things that somehow are personal to them, that describe them in some way.  The hope of it all is to achieve a sort of self portrait of the masses and examination of how images can directly show personality.  The issue she's been having is what is her role within the piece?  Her responsibility is as organizer and collector, setting guidelines for the project, paying for the cameras, developing and scanning the images.  In the end she ends up having more of a curatorial role.  But are they her images?  To whom do they belong to?  In Sophie Calle's book Suite Venitienne Jean Bouillard writes about Calle's authorship of ideas.  Because she sets all the rules, makes the game happen in the first place the authorship of everything that happens becomes hers.  Perhaps they start somewhere as someone else's but in the process she creates the person's mind becomes her work of art.  (This was speaking specifically to her work The Big Sleep where she invited strangers to sleep next to her).  Is Rachel's process a similar authorship?  Do the people that took the images only own the action and moments in which they captured the images, plus the space they photographed?  After it's recorded on the film does it become Rachel's image?

Rose