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Photography as content

"Keillor might be referring to radio shows in his answer...for many people today, photographs have become mere content."
Really? Why does Olivier Laurent bundle photography into Keillor's little rant and with no examples? I hear photography bundled as; photos, photographs, landcape photos, nature studies, gallery show, exhibition, opening, opening celebration, installation, art, retrospective, prints, silver prints, digital art, current work, fine art, magazine art, works of...etc.

Its a definition of the medium

I'm not sure I am getting this argument correctly. I have no problem with 'content'. Ok its a bit reductive but its appropriate as a shorthand for what we ACTUALLY do as distinct from the process and everything else that is merely mechanical and can be learned in a week. Also magazines/galleries etc want messages not illustrations. What I have a bigger problem with is an all pervading fundamental misapprehension (by many photographers/editors etc. ) of what photography is; its ‘nature’ if you like (assuming it can have a ‘nature’). Some photographers seem to be appealing to other photographers and facebook 'likes' - including my twitter feed - that I admit I also got sucked into - rather than ‘marketing’ themselves to prestigious editors and galleries. Some of my students see photography as primarily about technique, equipment, lighting, ‘rule of thirds’, ‘beauty’ etc. in fact anything and everything except what its actual raison d’etre is! All these things are useful but completely meaningless. WE make content. Its ABOUT things not OF things. AS David Hurn rightly put it we are ‘subject selectors’. Everything else is simply window dressing. Walker Evans didn’t have a problem with this so why should we? We don’t ask writers what pencil or laptop they use or the curve of the font they use in their writing. We want to know what its about. Its content!

Photography as content

Content is not nearly as bad as "product", now there we have a problem.

Photography as content

Content is not nearly as bad as "product", now there we have a problem.

Photography as content

Content is not nearly as bad as "product", now there we have a problem.

I am content

We record images using machines.
We select from the images we record according to their total content. We judge the quality of ANY image according to this content, and are judged accordingly.

Our choices based on content are judged by others, are appreciated by others and are bought and sold by others BECAUSE of their content.

What the boundaries of the image, whether photo or drawing, lithograph or painting, or a combination CONTAINS, is the CONTENT.

Obviously, and you have been conned by Mr Keillor, a well-known comic writer

Photography as "content".

Surely calling photography "content" is only bad when prefaced by the words "reader generated"?

I like it

We're all 'Content' on this planet!

New term

How about visual assets?

There are also opposite cases

"it's not far-fetched to say that, for many companies today, photographs have become mere content"
Yes, it is true, but there are also opposite cases, where the photograph is the main protagonist and the texts are the frame. This is the case of an Italian magazine that I would like to report here: www.potpourrimensile.com
enjoy it !

Content context...

I agree with Keillor, photographic images do not lend themselves well to being called 'content', because all images are taken for their context, in other words, what they convey in meaning.
From the most banal and bland to the most dynamic and dramatic, all images convey the essence of why they were shot in the first place, and this is not about content, but about the subjective choice of the photographer.
Instead of 'content', 'category' might be more appropriate.