The Death of the Photo Magazine
May 29, 2007
There was a time when I subscribed to multiple photo magazines – Camera and Darkroom (now long gone), Darkroom and Creative Camera Techniques (later to become Photo Techniques), View Camera, and the venerable Lenswork. There were probably others in there that I’ve forgotten.
Then Camera and Darkroom died. I stuck with Photo Techniques for a while, perhaps because they’d published some of my stuff, but in the end I noticed that I wasn’t really doing anything with the issues except for shifting them around when cleaning, so I let it go. View Camera got cancelled when I had (as so many people do) unpleasant interactions with Steve Simmons, the publisher. One by one, it seemed, they all failed to hold my interest and the I let the subscriptions lapse.
And lately, after looking at the past few issues of Lenswork, I’ve decided to let that one go, too. My reasons are almost exactly those listed by Colin Jago.
The other day, when I was at the bookstore in the Big City, I browsed the magazine rack there looking for some sort of magazine that might catch my interest. Lots of magazines on collecting photos, with gossipy columns about how various artist’s opening went over in New York, etc. Lots of formerly magnificent magazines that had descended into that niche formerly occupied by Popular Photography, complete with articles titled along the lines of “Ten quick tricks to improve your landscape photos”, “Using Filters to add POP and WOW to your photos!”, and “The 100 top reasons why you should sell all your camera gear and buy something else.”
I suspect it’s not so much that the magazines have changed. Some of it is surely that the magazines haven’t changed – they’re still recycling the same articles over and over and over, repeating each theme once per year. And so you subscribe for a while, realize you’ve seen it all, and let it go.
Some of it, surely, is that I’ve changed, and the stuff which once fascinated me no longer does.
I suspect, though, that much of the ‘reading about photography’ fix I needed to get from magazines before is now coming from reading various personal blogs about photography on the web. Well, it wasn’t exactly a surprise when video killed the radio star. I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised that the web has killed the photo magazines.
May 29, 2007 at 1:02 pm
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May 29, 2007 at 1:21 pm
I still hang onto four subscriptions. Lenswork, Black and White Magazine (Britain), B&W Magazine, and SHOTS. Three are quarterly, one is monthly, so I do not feel all that overwhelmed, and each has a unique place on my shelves. Lenswork is straightforward and very high quality, SHOTS is (almost) too artsy for me, B&W showcases a wide variety of wonderful photographers, and Black and White Magazine has a little bit of everything, and presents it in a manner different than US pubs. I still look forward to each and every issue.
As for web vs. print, I think it’s a mistake to forsake one medium for the other, as both have their benefits and their drawbacks.
The Internet, while rich in content and providing opportunities for feedback, allows us such control over our destination that it may actually get in the way of new experiences. People tend to visit where they feel most comfortable and most of us, it seems, do just that on the web.
Magazines, on the other hand, while providing far less quantity or variety of content, may include content and thoughts with which we may have had no previous knowledge. They also provide an opportunity to be published with a level of prestige not yet possible on the web (that I know of, anyway). It just seems a mistake to ignore the benefits of each.
May 29, 2007 at 4:20 pm
I find I am going the same way with subscriptions, although I keep up the subscription to View Camera because of nostaligia and the occasional interesting article. I do hate to see the WWW displacing print because WWW photos are not the same as prints, and looking at them is not a substitute for looking at prints.
May 29, 2007 at 5:44 pm
One thing that the internet can’t provide that magazines can is portable reading with high quality printing (a magazine is much more portable than a laptop). To that end I still enjoy Lenswork (in spite of the previous issue) and American Photo (which to me is the highest class of the trash photo magazines). I also wish that there were better magazines out there, though.
May 29, 2007 at 8:13 pm
Lenswork has become simply more and more boring – you would think no new photography had been done since the about the 1970’s
Viewcamera has also become more and more conservative. There was a time it had some good articles about various areas of contemporary photography as well as the “to be expected” things on old camera and old lenses – it actually had articles on Richard Misrach, Sally Mann and others – but not for a long time. Now it’s mostly full of stale old photography as old as most of the cameras it features (with which there is nothing wrong, but it’s as if there’s some kind of rule that you can only use a view camera to take pictures like Ansel Adams or… name your favourite dead photographer). Many of its articles, especially the reviews of equipment, are also so badly written that they just aren’t worth reading.
May 29, 2007 at 9:14 pm
Perhaps it’s an energy thing. I used to theorize that commedians had some finite supply of stuff to be funny about, and then they were stale forever, or at least until they went off to refresh.
So maybe lenswork has effectively mostly done all of the lenswork stuff there is (or they can reach)
May 29, 2007 at 10:34 pm
Hi
I agree with the comments on most photo tech magazines, they dont add much value. In that category I believe that the web has taken over.
I do however disagree on the comments in regards to Lenswork, both here and at Colin Jago’s blog.
Lenswork is dependant on “us” to submit interesting work. So either you have not submitted anything or you think your work is boring.
Or, you have achieved a level of development in your photography that you no longer need the input, too which I congratulate yourselves. I am far from there.
I dont know much about Brooks screening methods for work submitted.But I hope you have been honest enough to drop him an email of your concern.
May 30, 2007 at 1:19 am
I never subscribed to any of those, so it’s no great loss to me. Though I did occasionally pick up a single issue of a good photography magazine now and then, I never read through any of them. They’d sit in piles around my house until I’d be cleaning up and decide to finally recycle them. I mostly just looked quickly through the photos in them for inspiration. There are plenty of good sites on the web for that now.
What I lament more than the death of the photo magazine is the death of the small independent photo lab, due to the growth of digital photography and DIY printing. My favorite one in Vancouver, Rushant’s, closed its doors a few months ago. I always enjoyed going in there and having good chats with the owner, Peter Calvert, and his employee. Learned a lot that way. They made the switch to handle digital images and had put a huge investment into the equipment for it. But apparently that wasn’t enough. People like me, who were their bread and butter, were beginning to learn how to do their own digital image processing at home and no longer needed Rushant’s services. It’s the end of an era.
Paul, I’d like to hear your thoughts one of these days on a related phenomenon: the demise of real live communities of photographers. Now that we all relate to each other online, we rarely get together in person to view each other’s work, hang around developing and printing together, etc. Photography has become a more solitary endeavor, and communication about it is now mediated by technology. (Except for those who take and teach classes, but even a lot of that is done at the computer now.) I seem to recall you’ve even stopped attending the new work review group that you helped found (or maybe it even died), though I can’t find the reference to that on your blog anymore.
May 30, 2007 at 4:42 am
I let my Lenswork subscription expire as well. It just got to be boring, boring, boring! It was all the same stuff over and over again. I found that I had a couple of issues that were unopened. When I opened them, I hardly glanced through them and then put them on the shelf.
I have but one remaining subscription, and that’s to Outdoor Photographer, which I will probably let that one lapse as well. It’s mostly advertisements as well as the type of hype that you have already mentioned (this month’s offerings):
Top pros show you how to develop style.
Big 5 National Phot Parks
10 tips for the lowdown on nature.
I rarely find anything interesting there.
Thinking about the content, I would say that probably we have grown up, perhaps. Most of the tips and tricks are well known and after you use them for a time, they become cliche’ and seem to fit more in the realm of ‘pop photography’. Personally, it’s because I’m moving more towards substance, rather than ‘wow!’ that these magazines have little interest.
I prefer, now, to read photo essays and the like rather than to learn how to use a polarizer. I don’t think that the magazine is changing. I rather think that I am.
May 30, 2007 at 12:58 pm
Paul raises the interesting question – who are these mags really for? Is it perfectly natural to grow out of them as you shift from interest in technique to substance as technique becomes second nature?
May 30, 2007 at 10:01 pm
No one is bringing up Aperture. This magazine has managed to aggravate me, puzzle me, and inspire me for the 20 years I’ve been a subscriber. The one thing you cannot accuse it of is that it is stale.
May 30, 2007 at 11:30 pm
Perhaps Aperture just isn’t worth mentioning.
Interesting still are Ag(UK), Schwarzweiss(D), Fine Art Printer(D).
May 31, 2007 at 8:34 am
yep – Aperture confounds you. At least one issue a year will have me going WOW – or if I’m lucky, two. The other one or two will be huh?
Best mag for my money out there for the last few years has been Blindspot.
Somethign in every issue has grabbed my imagination in one way or another
May 31, 2007 at 12:10 pm
“View Camera got cancelled when I had (as so many people do) unpleasant interactions with Steve Simmons, the publisher.”
Amen. A decade ago at a Photo Plus Expo I was looking over some back issues of VC for purchase at their table when I watched Simmons bully some teenager who had asked about learning LF photography. Simmons was giving the kid a hard sell to buy his book, and then simply dismissed the kid with a wave of his hand and turned his back on him.
A few days later I called and cancelled my subs to VC and Camera Arts (which he owned at the time).
June 2, 2007 at 9:53 am
Just into “foam” from the netherlands — in english — worth a look.