Abstract

Since Niepce fixed the first image in 1825, photography has recorded personal and collective memories, the extraordinary and the banal, life, death, and conflict. It has contributed to our understanding of the world. Photography went through a crisis in the 1990’s that caused us to rethink our relationship with the medium. But it survived the postphotographic era to be ‘reborn’ with a veritable explosion of the medium across a variety of new and emerging platfroms.
We are at the most exciting point in the history of photography. A point that signals the end of photographic practice as we have known it for 185 years. A practice based on the printed or permanently fixed still image. The printed image no longer defines photography in the 21st century, however the still image has not disappeared from our view. It exists largely as a screen based medium, delivered across a wide range of devices, platforms and networks.