“You press the button. We do the rest” was Kodak’s slogan when Kodak No. 1 came on the market in 1889. Black is the artists’ garb. The 21th Century is a purgatory for specialists, skills, and the innocent object on the photographic paper. From all sides, the death of the medium is proclaimed, and images in galleries document first and foremost the disappearance of their own genre. Photographers no longer embark on expeditions through the streets, but wander for hours through Google Street View, like the Canadian artist Jon Rafman, taking screenshots of wondrous places that the Google camera has captured inadvertently. The avant-garde of photography doesn’t need to leave the house. And meanwhile, since everyone has a digital camera or smartphone, there has never been so much photographed by so many people and uploaded to the Internet. Photos are the new text. … Read More >