I remember the early 2000s with a strange mix of clarity and blur. Which, in hindsight, feels fitting.
Photography was at a tipping point. Film, chemistry, clockwork shutters, all on their way out. I still have a box of dark slides, prepped, loaded, ready to go. Rendered instantly obsolete by my first Phase One digital back. Metro, my lab of choice, must have felt it like a punch to the gut.
Digital wasn’t just a new tool. It was a new logic. We moved from the physical certainty of silver halide to the fluid ambiguity of code. From materials to metadata.
I embraced the change. Remortgaged the house. Upgraded everything. Macs, Photoshop workflows, I even bought a camera from Sony, makers of pocket cassette players.
At the time, digital solved so many of the old technical problems. Colour fidelity. Dynamic range. Responsiveness. You could make pictures as fast as you could see them.
I thought that photography had become democratic. That anyone could press a button, and the machine would do the rest. I genuinely believed it would free people from the tyranny of technique. A new generation of photographers. Fresh eyes. Fresh insight. A whole new world of discovery.
And what did we get?
A tsunami of software, tech, templates, and presets. The photographic imagination; decided, shaped, and managed by the very tools that were meant to liberate it. Because the floodgates didn’t just open to vision. They opened to everything. Simulation. Distortion. Noise. The flood wasn’t just creative. It was existential.
When everything can be photographed, altered, filtered, and shared instantly, when the image becomes disposable, why you photograph, and how you see, matters more than ever.
Tools don’t make the image. You do. Your history. Your temperament. Your education. The things you notice. Your willingness to wait. Your capacity to discern, to care, to make decisions shaped by memory and instinct.
That’s what gives a photograph weight. The best images aren’t perfect. They’re present. They carry intention. They’re shaped by someone who was really looking.
So no, I don’t worry about whether photography is dead, or over, or too easy. I worry about whether we’re still looking. With integrity. With attention. With the willingness to care.
Photograph of boys with bikes, Toxteth. Liverpool, July 1981
