Will video kill the photography star?
With Meta’s rapacious drive to copy platforms like TikTok, the direction that Instagram is going is clear. Just like video killed the radio star, so video will kill the still photographer. Or will it?
Radio is thriving in the form of podcasts, and music platforms like Spotify. The spoken voice is clearer than ever, and tunes are endlessly accessible via cellphones. Indeed, here in Africa where I live, even people in remote parts of the continent can be seen enjoying their favourite songs on their phone, be they walking a dusty path to collect water or waiting under a tree for a bicycle taxi.
Where is MTV now? “Radio" trumps the video star. It remains the best way to endure a traffic jam, is the backing track to any road trip, the beat that dictates your running pace, the solace in your headphones on the airplane, the guide that gives you direction on unfamiliar streets.
Nuit de Noel, 1963, Malick Sidibé
When it comes to photography, I like to consider the power of still imagery and that leads me to think about rock art. The oldest example was discovered in Blombos Cave on South Africa’s coast, a piece of ochre adorned with a carefully crafted geometric pattern dated conservatively at 77,000 years old. A hand stencil in Maltravieso cave in Spain is older than 64,000 years. Another Spanish cave was decorated with bison and horses 35,000 years ago, and the wildlife pageants of Lascaux Cave in France were created about 17,000 years ago. All of these remarkable still images have broadened our understanding of human history and culture, and the awe they inspire endures to this day.
I’ve explored Tsodilo Hills in Botswana where over 4,500 rock paintings created by different inhabitants over thousands of years tell a story so profound that it leaves visitors believing in gods. I cannot shake the experiences that I had on that visit, and every person I meet who has been there holds it in the same awe.
The power of the still photographer to convey a story in a split second inspires similar awe in me, and in billions of other people. These are not images you will find by trolling Google or Meta’s algorithms, they are the ones that are imprinted on your mind. For me, it is young Hector Pieterson’s limp body being carried by a terrified student during the Soweto uprising; the kiss in Time Square after victory over Japan; the piercing green eye of an Afghan girl; a loyalist militiaman falling as he is struck by a bullet in the Spanish civil war; a dramatic sky framed by the rock walls of Yosemite Valley; a vulture watching a starving child; a gorilla hugging its rescuer as she is transported to safety in a car; the magnetic attraction between a young couple dancing at a Christmas party in Mali.
In the media world (in which I am embroiled) despite all the calls I hear for more video, my sense is that it is pandering to the theory of algorithms, and the mistaken idea that you can cram so much more into video. I don’t believe for a second that video will ever trump still photography. In the hands of the right creator, like rock art and other static art forms since then, a photograph can convey a lifelong story in a single moment; an epic in the blink of an eye. In a gallery, a viewer will stand and gaze at a single image for ages, yet the comings and goings of people at a video presentation are legion - we don’t have the time or patience to have it spelled out for us on a screen.
Today on TikTok, and the platforms like Instagram and Facebook that doltishly copy them, there is a battle going on for our attention, but all I see are people swiping up and up and up, like the endless comings and goings at video presentations in galleries. But on the way out, those patrons will stop at a still image that grips them.
The virtue of the still photographer is the power to convey a story in an instant, and in our time stretched world, that is an inestimable craft.