thanks for your comments. I think you have nailed the issue. Tim is branching out into these new things because he has mastered photography. Its through his reputation as a photographer that these opportunities have come.

You make good points and its true having heard Tim you’ll know a lot more where he is coming from. A duck can’t be a rabbit, unless he/she sees two sides!

Agreeing with what you say and agreeing with much of what Tim says later in the interview I still just can’t work out how ‘we are living in a post-photographic world’; no matter which way your read that statement. Maybe I lack a bit of imagination!

Also if we can extrapolate any meaning we want from the statement, doesn’t that make the statement itself meaningless?

Even if we somehow equate Tim’s words with a movement away from Leroy’s world then surely that’s not ‘post photography’, afterall Leroy is just a single voice, but actually a reflection that we are living in a world that photographically is just less elitist? Dare I say it more interesting?

I guess it could be argued that we are not as reliant on photos as we were in the past. Also that we have less belief in them, but that’s a long way short of saying we are post photography.

You yourself have argued so authoritatively that what has really changed is the economics. Photography, even professionally taken photography is more accesible than at any other time in history. How does Tim’s statement sit with the fact that the interview appears in the New York Times Lens blog. Surely the blog itself is testament to the fact that we are not living in a post-photographic world?

Tim does qualify his statement by saying,

‘If you are interested in photography, then you are interested in something — in terms of mass communication — that is past. I am interested in reaching as many people as possible.’

Again, he’s making a statement, but isn’t there something a little bit absurd about stating that photography as a form or reaching people is past in an interview on The New York Times Lens website? We are debating this and not Restrepo exactly because I can go on the Lens blog, whereas Restrepo remains out of my reach (unless I download it illegally)

To me this reads like someone whose photos didn’t achieve what he hoped. Is that because the march of time has somehow changed the impact of photography, or because Tim bought into a myth about what they could/would/might achieve?

Of course it could be both, or if you believe in rabbit’s neither!

But you are extrapolating, just like everyone reading the interview. Statements don’t have unequivocal meanings, which is why we are having this debate. I can’t speak on Tim’s behalf. I can just offer a reading based on my interpretation of the interview, filled out with some background from his Newcastle presentations. There are competing views here of that event too — Brenda, below, claims “Hetherington seemed jaded when he was in Newcastle, bitter even.” I didn’t see or hear anything to support that view, but each to their own.

‘Photography’ can encompass many different aspects. You want to read it one way and say if TH says ‘post-photographic’ it has to mean only one thing. My point is that there might be other issues at stake here, and we should consider those alternative interpretations. The new generation of image makers might be proud to call themselves photographers, and why not, but that doesn’t mean they buy into the ossified view of professional practice espoused by Leroy and others does it?

Most ‘photography’ is young women taking pictures of their social lives and thereafter, their children growing up. Young men do it too, but not to nearly the same extent. This anecdotal evidence from someone who ran a dev shop for many decades. That’s what’s on Facebook, and long may it continue.

Lots of this kind of thing about at the moment: but photography has been declared dead many times, most vociferously at the advent of colour neg. Long live colour neg. I can’t even see that disappearing soon.

Nice comment thread. Ty all.