you + your flickr page are boring

This post at Lindsayism is a really nifty rant on the ubiquity of cameras. It's weird because I'm a photographer and I've been interested in photography since I was a kid, but I find myself becoming disillusioned with the entire enterprise. Everyone and their fucking mother is taking pictures of everyone and their fucking mother and it's really getting out of control. Lindsay makes a good point about the people who take pictures at parties and shows: they do it just to prove that they were there. They aim the camera at other people, but it's really just a way of calling attention to themselves.

What really bothers me about the oversaturation of photography is the low quality, which, truth be told, is inevitable with the increasing democratization of the medium. Most people just don't take interesting pictures. I'm glad you and your buddies had fun making pizza the other night, but do I really care to see 5 pictures of the burnt product? And why are there 12 people commenting on it? Is it that interesting?

Anymore, I just want to leave my camera behind and live in the moment. I want to travel all over the world and not take one fucking photograph. That would be amazing. Another thing: as a photographer, I have to say it drives me insane with misanthropy when a photographer tries to document unfortunate and/or tragic situations. Put the fucking camera down, for fuck's sake. Jesus Q. Not everything needs to be documented. And what exactly are you trying to convey by taking a picture of someone? Photographs, more often than not, fail to convey the real weight of a particular moment. Of course, there are photographs that are arresting in their enormity, but those are the exceptions. (An obvious example would be Steve McCurry's "afghan girl," but how many documentary photographs are that amazing? Not many.)

Alas, as digital cameras flood the market, photography becomes more and more boring. I love digital cameras, but the convenience, quantity, and overall "soccer momness" of it all, for the most part, has resulted in bland fucking pictures of bland fucking people livin' their bland fucking lives. How many more parties can The Cobra Snake document? It's just boring now. Don't get me wrong: I give The Cobra Snake props for doing absolutely nothing and becoming a celebrity for it, but how many parties of zombie-like hipsters can you photograph before the whole thing has become some kind of sad parody of itself?