I often find myself in a position where I am explaining photography, to those not engaged with photography. My explanation is always the same whoever I am speaking with. Photography today is the most important thing in all of our lives, it informs every decision we make and yet it is so omnipresent that we don’t even see it as photography. Social media is photography, online is photography, retail is photography, politics is photography, dating is photography and on and on and on. Photography today is a visual language. A global language without frontiers. I am usually met with a look of confusion or boredom.

Sure, photography is also an art form, a career and a hobby, but intrinsically it is a form of visual communication. Something that those not engaged with the medium seem to have a problem understanding. There have been occasions when I have used every metaphor and strategy in my arsenal to explain how photography is not just pictures of birds, flowers, birthdays and weddings. And failed to break through a preconceived belief that photography is just pressing a button.

The disconnect between what is perceived as being ‘art’ and ‘business’ is the beginning of the problem. The truth is that every business needs photography and photography is a business, but  practitioners in both areas seem to want to deny this, both keen to protect their turf. Why they should want to do this is both obvious and pointless. The artist has never wanted to be seen as a businessman or woman and the businessman or woman does not want to be seen as an artist. A mutual disrespect exists between both, based primarily on generic caricatures, which neither group does much to dispel.

This is a problem. More for photography, than business. Today, business can get photography cheaply, with AI they can even make their own. Photography cannot make its own clients and it cannot exist below a certain financial level. This is the medium’s biggest problem in a climate where it is repeatedly disrespected and misunderstood. This misunderstanding is based in the belief that photography is easy and only important if a business needs something to make a website, brochure or poster look more interesting or even worse ‘pretty’ or ‘arty’. I’m sure that you have come across such an opion at least once, if you are a professional photographer.

If creatives, and I include photographers in this description, continue to alienate themselves from business, photography will die as a professional career. That may seem harsh, but business is not interested in making any effort to understand photography, because they don’t need to. It is the photographer’s responsibility to make the medium relevant and understood. But here is a problem. How can someone, anyone, explain anything if they don’t understand what they need to explain? Photographers understand photography, but do they understand where photography is going? Are they willing to accept that the past is prologue and that the future is uncertain? That the future will be different. To understand this is to begin to move forward in attempting to state a case for professional photography, to people who do not see one. Academic instutions are slowly starting to realise this, as they begin to launch courses such as Photography and Creative Industries and Photography and Digital Practice. This is a start, but it doesnt help those photographers with years of experience under their belts. We are also yet to see if the people teaching on those courses are able to point towards a new world, that they also may not wish to engage with.

I am going to make a suggestion. If you are a professional photographer, begin a process of explaining what you do, what you can offer, and why they should work with you to people you know who have no knowledge or interest in photography. Do not give in if they don’t understand you, no not dismiss their questions, even if they seem foolish and repetitive. Hone your skills in explaining photography. Not what photography was, but what it is and where it is going. Be prepared to respect smartphones, social media and AI. Be open to feeling confused, frustrated and unsure. These are normal responses to being questioned. If you are unable to explain and defend your position you will understand, why there is so much misunderstanding of a professional medium, that is the most important language in the world today.

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), What Does Photography Mean To You? (Bluecoat Press 2020) and Inside Vogue House: One building, seven magazines, sixty years of stories, (Orphans Publishing 2024). 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.

© Grant Scott 2026