Snapshots of the Future of Photography

We spoke with the International Center of Photography dean Fred Ritchin about the state of the medium.

August 26, 2015, 7:20pm

Courtesy ICP

The dean of the International Center of Photography asks a lot of questions: Why do violent news images matter? What is the future of photography? What can a photograph accomplish?

As a photo editor, curator, and professor, Fred Ritchin has been grappling with the terms of technology’s convergence on the photo. He likens the moment as a media revolution parallel with the creation of the printing press and the dissemination of information.

These exciting times in new media call for new approaches for teaching and being in conversation with new types of photographers. As dean, Ritchin oversees more than 5,000 students in photography education yearly, from teen workshops to master’s degree programs. He is a prolific writer who has penned two significant books Bending the Frame: Photojournalism, Documentary, and the Citizen (Aperture, 2013) and After Photography (W.W. Norton 2008). In After Photography, he writes "Using the camera only to provide answers and not questions is to underestimate what the camera can do."

We hope his students lead by his example. Aside from the books he has written, he's curated some of the most important photography exhibits, including An Uncertain Grace: The Photographs of Sebastião Salgado, What Matters Now: Proposals for a New Front Page, and worked as co-director of the NYU/Magnum Foundation Photography and Human Rights educational program. Prior to joining ICP, he was professor of Photography and Imaging at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts and early in his career, he was a picture editor for The New York Times.

From experience, Rtichin knows what he is talking about, and his insight only drives us to be more inquisitive. The Creators Project decided to ask him some questions of our own.

An excerpt from Bending the Frame

The Creators Project: Why be a photographer today?

Fred Ritchin: It’s the age of the image. It’s a moment for reinvention and a moment of expansion. In this moment in history there are more possibilities than ever before and with social media nearly every one has a camera or a camera phone so the question is: Does that make you a photographer? What does someone who really wants to practice as a photographer? What do you do now to distinguish yourself?

Is it still relevant to study photography as a student in a school or arts program?

It expands the idea of what photography is. Do I want to do multimedia? Do I want sound and video with it? Geo-tagging? What do I want to do with it? So one becomes a photographer but one has many ways of publishing the work, using the work doing the work. Technically the same question [arose] from when we went from film cameras, digital cameras, you had to learn Photoshop, now there are programs that make things simpler. There have been many transitions.

What is the necessary skill sets one needs to be a photographer?

Across the board you need a vision and have something to say. In a sense, it’s the best of both worlds you have new and old photography and you have your choice. As always its people determined to say something and want to get it out. Do you want to be socially relevant? Do you want to change the world? Do you want to work with NGOs? Do you want to work as a fine art photographer? I talk a lot about things like meta photography where people make sense of the billions of photography online and ask what do we do with it?

Images courtesy ICP School

Tell us about your current emphasis at ICP.

ICP comes from the sense of concerned photography and trying to be relevant to the world. The last book I wrote, Bending the Frame, was about how to use imagery to change things for the better. To a certain extent, there’s so much imagery. Does the subject make the imagery or the observer? Is it a collaboration? What new ideas are there? Take climate change, there is very little iconic imagery if any. The war in Afghanistan is the longest war in American history but there is very little iconic imagery. What interests me a lot is the use of video with police shootings. The short videos are playing a very large role on social media where as in print media it was often a single iconic image that played a large role.

How do you get students to care about the world outside?

We make a big point of caring about the world outside. Last fall, we did a large public program about climate change with scientists, photographers, and artists. We recently did a program on “Stop and Frisk.” We do lots to bring the outside world here. We are cognizant that we are the International Center of Photography and we are in the middle of New York City.