I haven’t written a new article for many, many months primarily because I have used the A Photographic Life podcast to express my opinions, views and ideas. However, I find myself drawn to write this article as a line in the sand. As a red flag for the medium to consider.

I do not intend to get into a discussion here over the pro’s and con’s of being self-taught or formally taught photography. Whether YouTube is an appropriate platform to learn from or if social media is a great source of information. The line I am drawing is not as simple as that. It is not as devisive. Not as rudimentary or crude. I do want to address an issue that I believe is the basic foundation for the future of photography which has touchpoints within these arguments. Let me explain.

All creative mediums reach a point of stagnation in their history. Where the old guard become too comfortable, when work becomes repetitive and safe. At this point a revolution is called for, new blood, new thinking and new attitudes that address the issues that young/new creatives are observing and reflecting. Think of the art world and the impressionists, the cubists, the futurists, the abstract expressionists, the pop artists. Think of music from the 1960s onwards and you can plot your own timeline leading to punk, to new romantics, to goth, to indie and on and on. These creative mediums challenged themselves and in so doing remained exciting and vital. Now let’s think about photography.

Let’s think of the pictorialists, straight photography, surrealists, humanists, the new topographics, the Düsseldorf School and the conceptualists. Just as with painting and music photography has seen its own share of movements that have challenged the perception of what constitutes a photograph and a photographer. However, it has also fallen into the same trap as other creative outlets through its democratization into becoming a product, a commodity. Just as popular music has become focused on digitally produced sound over narrative so photography has become consumed with the aesthetic and that is often a very narrow post produced aesthetic created to gain likes.

I was speaking to a photographer recently who had been shown a copy of a recent edition of the Portrait of Britain annual. He was unaware of the concept of the book before being shown it and asked who the photographer was who had made it. Only to be told that it was not one photographer but many, but many who made images that all looked like each other. The aesthic was the dominant. The photographer non-existent.

This has to be the result of two things. Students being taught photography and shown photography that is narrow focused on one particular aesthetic and social media being filled with this type of work. Neither of these things are good. There is no sense of revolution or progress when everything looks the same.

With the practice of AI image creation now a reality this raises a secondary issue. If all the work looks the same and that is the work being scraped then the work it produces will look like the work that is being produced and posted. This creates a circle of obselescence for the photographer and photography itself. Creative practices are not about doing what everyone else does to gain recognition. It should be personal.

A photographer today needs to understand this. They need to understand their worth, their place and their reason to exist. If they do not they will not last.

They also need to understand ‘best practice’ if they intend to work as a commissioned photographer and create work that does not fall into the well of sameness. Both of these can be easily addressed but only if they are taught. This does not have to be formally taught within an academic institution and in fact that is no gurantee that ‘best practice’ will be taught. The quality of the information will always be dictated by the knowledge and experience of the person giving it to you. However, a little simple research should be able to ensure that you are receiving nuggets of gold rather than bottles of snake-oil. Good teaching should also open your eyes to the importance of the ‘self’ in making work that avoids plagerism and repetition. Of course both of these learning journeys require the participant to be open-minded and willing to hear what they need to hear not neccesarily what they want to hear. As George Orwell said “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people things they do not want to hear.”

Threads seems to be where many photographers have transitioned to from Twitter. I have a love/hate relationship with it. Love because it is if used carefully a great resource for the photographic community to share news and information. Hate because is is also filled with people with little or no experience or knowledge passing on their perceived ‘wisdom’. This to me is dangerous. Just as ‘Fake News’ has the ability to inform and engage people in untruths and lies, uninformed ‘photographers’ propagating ‘bad practice’ can have a similar affect. The same is true of YouTube.

This is a problem for photography. The more its core foundation is watered down the easier it is for others who do not understand the importance of the medium within our culture to demean its complexities of production and meaning. I see and hear very little discussion concerning the big picture impact of this dumbing down of the medium by the very people who are creating the issue. They are blinded in the race to compete for likes and followers based on camera kit and photoshop. Perhaps this is not surprising as my observations are of a ferile community constantly fighting with each other and unwilling to listen to those who may or do know much more than they about how professional photography works today and always has done.

Sadly, I think the wild cat is out of the bag and that there is no way of taming the beast. Creative arts based education is under attack in schools, with resulting low numbers continuing their studies in further and higher education. This leads to course, college and school closures. The very places that are required in a time when photography has never been more important and invasive in our lives. The places where ‘best practice’ could be learnt will not be there in the future. This forces people towards self-proclaimed experts on social media. Now, I am not saying that there is not great information being given out by caring professionals across multiple social media platforms. There is, but it can be hard to find and you need to be able to sort the gold from the dirt to recognise it. I’m afraid that this is not a very positive end to an article that suggests a number of serious issues. I have no answers, other than to suggest that if you are a photographer working today or just starting out on a professional career, make sure that you understand that there is ‘best’ and ‘bad’ practice. That experienced photographers have a lot they can teach you and that we all learn everyday by listening not shouting.

Dr.Grant Scott
After fifteen years art directing photography books and magazines such as Elle and Tatler, Scott began to work as a photographer for a number of advertising and editorial clients in 2000. Alongside his photographic career Scott has art directed numerous advertising campaigns, worked as a creative director at Sotheby’s, art directed foto8 magazine, founded his own photographic gallery, edited Professional Photographer magazine and launched his own title for photographers and filmmakers Hungry Eye. He founded the United Nations of Photography in 2012, and is now a Senior Lecturer and Subject Co-ordinator: Photography at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, and a BBC Radio contributor. Scott is the author of Professional Photography: The New Global Landscape Explained (Routledge 2014), The Essential Student Guide to Professional Photography (Routledge 2015), New Ways of Seeing: The Democratic Language of Photography (Routledge 2019), and What Does Photography Mean To You? (Bluecoat Press 2020). His photography has been published in At Home With The Makers of Style (Thames & Hudson 2006) and Crash Happy: A Night at The Bangers (Cafe Royal Books 2012). His film Do Not Bend: The Photographic Life of Bill Jay was premiered in 2018.

Scott’s book Inside Vogue House: One building. Seven magazines. Sixty Years of Stories is on sale now.

© Grant Scott 2025