[matthew]

This quotation was mentioned in an article on The Online Photographer this morning:

"Isn't it amazing how photography has advanced without improving?"
- Charles Sheeler, July 16, 1883 – May 7, 1965.

[NT73]

I get the same feeling about motoring. Cars and technology (like ABS brakes) have improved, but the speed limits keep going down.
There are more users but not more experts, I suppose.

An example is the ride on a bus. I get bounced around, just as I did 65 years ago when going to school. Only the cushions and decorations have changed.

So we have better cameras in the hands of people who want a blurry picture of Aunt Maude 's tea party.

It is a shame that Charles Sheeler only got to 1965. What a shock he would have got today.
But will they become better photographers because of it, in time.
I think the improvements in photography are related to the computer age. Remember that the computer age is only just beginning, whereas cameras have been around for a century or more.

[EnglishBob]

We have a few members in the camera club that have been shooting since the 1920's.... they are use the latest DSLR's and lenses and complain the images are not much better than the 1920's images lol.

But then what makes a great image? For me it's mostly about composition, light and choice of subject... none of which is affected by the camera. We had 3 members in their 90's until recently, one passed away last November, but we have a whole slew of them in their late 80's.

We have 2 members that still shoot large format and medium format and have their own darkrooms. I have to admit that it isn't often a digital image has the same impact as a 20*16 darkroom print from the large or medium format... but them these two photographers are probably the best 2 in the club, both have been published in National Geographic and countless other publications.

[Wedding Shooter]

Very true.

[nia]

So meaningful and even he told this in 1960s... What would he have thought about today's photography!

Thanks dear Matthew,
with my love,
nia

[Irma]

How something can advance without improve? :/

To me this is a bit difficult to understand, and not because of the language meaning.... but the concept itself...

I read in his bio about his life and his photography. He was a painter and just turned to photography because he knew that he couldn't pay the bills by selling his paintings. He was a self-taught photographer and his subjects were mainly architecture and industrial parks. He avoids any trace of nature in his industrial park photography as he thought industrialization will erase us. He died in l965, 10 years before the first digital camera appeared.

At the end, and with my difficulties to understand abstract concepts I think this quote is not valid anymore.

I just think about macro photography, I mean, we can see the flees of a bee in a picture with a P&S and a macro adapter! We can take pictures of the moon with beautiful details from our backyard. I just can't understand and believe that photography has advanced without improving.

I might be very wrong here... but this is the way I understand it..... now....

[Wedding Shooter]

The way I see it he is referring to the quality of the photography - even with great digital equipment there is so much rubbish out there.

[NT73]

The way I see it he is referring to the quality of the photography - even with great digital equipment there is so much rubbish out there.

Quite true, but also there is much more talent also. The fact that he died before the advent of digital and the reduction in price of good equipment, possibly makes his statement fairly accurate for 1965. Not really for 2011 though.
I understand that there is so much rubbish, but there was shoe boxes full of little B&W snaps when I was a child in (probably) most homes in the country. There must have been as much rubbish then as there is now, ( and also the few gems) but it was not given the exposure to the masses. The computer age has .
Maybe photography had improved but was just hidden.

[matthew]

I see something of a parallel between the "digital revolution's" popularization of photography to the advent or inexpensive computers and MIDI instruments that lowered the entry requirements to record music. It didn't make musicianship any easier, only its production, and resulted in some truly abysmal recordings. It also created entire new genres and completely changed the way the music industry works. So the electronic age was not only an advance, but also created some real improvements - even if being a musician is just as much of an art and skill as it was forty years ago.

Of course, any analogy breaks down if it's taken too far.

I've also been known to divide photography into two different but related hobbies: those who like cameras and those who like pictures. I see this statement of "advancing without improving" as following the same division. One of the biggest changes in popularizing photography in the past ten years was the Digital Rebel (300D), but this was a manufacturing and marketing advance that brought the price down, and the past seven and a half years have seen eight new models, each one 'more/better', but all fundamentally the same camera.

The technology has advanced, but that alone doesn't improve the art of photography itself. That, as always, remains the job of the photographer.

[NT73]

The technology has advanced, but that alone doesn't improve the art of photography itself. That, as always, remains the job of the photographer.

But the more people introduced to the Photographic art world, then the more likely it is for new photographers and ideas to come along.

(An infinite number of monkeys and an infinite number of typewriters) kind of theory. :/

[Zig]

It seems an "art mirroring life" thing: technology gives the illusion of advancement, whether technological addiction is present in other creative forms, music, banks, social care frameworks, schools, law enforcement/policing, etc; I'm sure that at any time in history, the whole process of social change into "betterness" of government or quality of life, would have been summed up by a similar pithy epithet:
For instance, substituting a word like "civilisation" or "mankind" for "photography" in Sheller's statement, gives us pretty much something that might have been said by anyone from Plato to Ghandi.