Photography in the Digital Age, Geoffrey Batchen

Notes from my reading of Photography in the Digital Age,  by Geoffrey Batchen:

Photography started with death. People had to pose, unmoving, as if dead. In it's early days, it was used to commemorate the dead. Some feared photography would steal their life. Early photography struggled with life and death as photographs needed light to be seen, yet the same light also caused them to fade.
      All photograph is a manipulation. Digital photograph is entirely fabricated, but even darkroom photography involves invention and manipulation. Yet it also carries the impression of its subject, as if the objects reached into the picture plane. The object, however manipulated, had to exist at one point to be photographed. Computerized images however can appear as photos yet never exist. Digital images are in time, but not of time. Photography, however, does not have to be threatened by the digital. Photography has always involved different techniques. As long as the human survives, human value and culture will also survive. The machine will always be guided by human desires. Photography's dilemma coincides with philosophers' ponderings: photography represents a reality but reality itself is comprised of representations. By challenging the death of photography, one must also challenge what it means to be dead or alive. Photography's passing will coincide with another way of seeing--and of being.

My own thoughts:
This essay was published in 1999, and since then, digital photography has exploded. As a photographer in a photo studio, what I see is an over saturation of photography in the market. Cell phones, laptops, tablets, MP3 players, and almost any electronic device seems to include a complimentary camera. "Prosumer" equipment is cheeper and more accessible to people. I wonder what Batchen makes of it. To me, I feel as if it will reach critical mass. After that, who can say? People are less likely to come to my studio for a family portrait, because even though I can take "better," more crisp and professional images, the sheer quantity of images parents have of their children on their iPhone makes up for the quality of image I can produce. I am not concerned about this however. I am an artist first, and a photographer second. I am an image maker, and photography is merely a tool. Just as the earliest humans made images in caves, the most futuristic humans will have images around them. I create things and will continue to do so until I die.