From Roland Barthes to Vincent Laforet, the 99 cents Odyssey.

A recent post from Andrew Hetherington, creator of Whats the Jackanory? led me into the newly created blog of Vincent Laforet and his Seminal Article “The cloud is Falling“. With the luxury of remoteness, I embraced his clear views on the future of the medium as a profession.  Roland Barthes, in his most personal work, la “Chambre Claire” (Camera Obscura), states that certain photographs provokes in him “minute Jubilations” while others leave him indifferent, further, he never loves all the photographs of the same photographer. As a spectator this is a point well taken and illustrates his notion of Studium and Punctum.  For the sake of clarity I will present here a brief description:

• The Studium:  Beyond the photographs that do not “talk” to Barthes, some exist that elicit an average interest.  This interest, the Studium, is cultural, social, or maybe politic.  It is the statement “I like” and also refers to the informative value of photography.
• The Punctum: is the “bite”, the “cut”. The detail that opens the gates of visceral emotions, the “I love”.

I think that we all agree, we do not Love all the photographs of the same photographer, but we all love many photographs from a multitude of photographers, this concept is clearly embodied by the success of the 99 cents song [and reminds me of the time I was making tape compilations of my favorite vinyls]. Didn’t Apple announce 5 billions songs sold? and what about the poster business, we all need something on the wall.  Well, maybe there are some solutions here for the pro photographers.  What would you say, if I told you, on my site, you can download a high resolution file of a photograph with the necessary punctum from a renown photographer for 99 cents.  This file can be sent to your local or online printing facility, framed and displayed on your wall proudly. Democratize art, I say, flood the market with high quality work and kill the micro-stock industry.  What if I told you, you are all owners of this non-profit company [which will not see profit for at least 3 to 5 years], what would you say… I know what Henri Cartier-Bresson would say.

An interesting point brought forth by Vincent Laforet, was the recommendation given to photographers to remain somewhat firm on their fees in order to restrict bids.  I am afraid that this practice in other fields, including mine, has never been successful as far as I can recollect and may benefit only a select few. Capitalism is based on this economic principle.  

The last option appears to be changing the media to adapt to its new delivery modality or more appropriately called “the multimediograph” (you can quote me on that term), the ken burn special, the 2 1/2 D, amplified with audio commentaries, sounds, video,and writing. This appears to me as a very appealing form  as I found myself clicking on these multimedia facets occasionally offered by the New-York Times.  Here we go again, the 3 minutes multimediograph for 99 cents, better than a song, better than a video, this is information with style delivered to you Iphone.  Naturally, the user would have access to all media involved in the multimediograph, all downloadable for 99 cents each.

One final argument, the concept of Free and why it is limited in foresight. For illustration purpose, working in an hospital, should I value the work of our volunteers? They offer help for free and this is commendable.  The truth is that I do not value their services which are more often than none unreliable and costly in time.  You see volunteers often work as transporters and are responsible for transferring the patient from their room to the preoperative area.  This process, which takes often more than 1 hour,  is by no mean free.  I think that the free information available on the internet is plagued with a similar problem.  It is there, maybe, but how long will it take you to find it? and how reliable is it?.  I will conclude that cheap is better than free.

Shit, I want to start this company, I will call it  ”I-Cast” or should it be “I-Sense”.