In the years since, for better or for worse, many of the ideas driving those early photoblogs have fallen by the wayside, with new formats and platforms replacing each other in a bewildering fashion. Many more photographers have come to embrace the web, in particular the social-networking bits.
Before looking at this in more detail, it might be worthwhile to point out that the internet seems made for photography. Photographs offer an immediacy that survives even under the most adverse, aka attention-deficit-disorder-plagued, circumstances.
Interestingly enough, Tumblr is nothing but a variant of the very early photoblogs on steroids. The basic format is the same: present usually one photograph (or another short snippet of information, like a video, an animated GIF, or a text) at a time. Following other Tumblrs then adds the steroids. While in the past one needed to visit one photoblog after another, Tumblr now offers a seemingly incessant stream of work, all in one place. What’s more, showcasing other people’s photographs appears to have overtaken showcasing one’s own.
This all sounds pretty great, except that there’s a multitude of problems, some of them well-known, others not so much. For starters, a large number of photographers are massively concerned about copyright. If everybody were to ask photographers for permission to showcase their work, Tumblr would grind to a halt in less time than it takes to say the word “copyright.”
This isn’t to say that concerns about copyright are invalid. But photographers worried about it might want to ask themselves what damage is done to their work (and income) if someone showcases their pictures to a possibly larger, possibly different audience, for noncommercial reasons. If a photographer is very concerned, a simple solution would be to not put photographs online. The moment they’re on the web, the medium’s properties kick in; the nature of the internet makes copyright violations incredibly simple. Then again, it also makes it easier to detect and go after those violations (as retailer DNKY just found out).
As far as I’m concerned, the bigger issue is the sloppy attribution of photographs, especially on Tumblr. Often, I find photographs where the source is not given at all, or where it is given in such a way that tracking down the photographer involves considerable work. This translates to a non-fair-use copyright violation, and unfortunately, many Tumblr users — often photographers themselves — are woefully uninformed or unconcerned about this.
Photo: Alec Soth
