Numero dos

Topic of the week: what photography has become

I found myself being cynical while I was at an art fair today, in downtown Milwaukee. As I was perusing the stands of homemade decoupage, amateur photographs, and designer pens; I wondered who actually buys this overpriced "art". A photograph of some castle in Europe which had been photo-shopped to a sepia color, was selling for $160. What!? That means that the photographer had sold enough pictures to know that he could sell this photo for the price of a cheap digital camera. I'm not saying he did bad work, it was a lovely photograph and I would have been extremely proud if I had created such a work.
The largest part of my confusion is why would someone pay that kind of money when these kinds of photos are a dime a dozen on the internet. I bet a few of you have them as your screen saver. Maybe not a castle in Europe, but something along those lines. An empty road in fall with leaves spilled across the pavement, an ocean of turquoise with an empty hammock, a purple flower in the prime of it's life, etc. etc. Those are all free too! Well, they aren't suppose to be, but since they're on the internet they have become fair game. You could easily save one to your desktop and if you decided you loved it so much, put it on a jump drive, print it off at your local CVS, have it matted, and ta-da: a new piece of art for your dining room.
The reason I'm cynical is because I don't see what makes his photo so special. With the money you could spend by not by overpriced photos, you could use your own camera, vacation to a scenic area, take a lovely photo and put that on your living room wall. It would mean so much more to you because you wouldn't just see the photo, you would see the memories included in the moment you captured on film. That is the beauty of photography, to capture moments in time and make them eternal; not to sell them at heinous prices and sit on someone's wall as a way to fill the white space.