I never liked photography

Robert Mapplethorpe

I never liked photography. Not for the sake of photography. I like the object. I like the photographs when you hold them in your hand. – Robert Mapplethorpe

I wonder what Mapplethorpe would have thought of the lack of the object in modern photography? What percentage of the zillions of digital photographs people take today make it to the stage of a finished print? Tiny I would think. Less than 1%? But I guess that’s a good thing really. If a photograph is good enough, and the photographer likes it enough, a print might be made. The percentage of b+w negatives that made it to finished prints must be pretty tiny too. The days of dropping off your colour film to the chemist and getting back 35 shite photos and one kinda half decent one are pretty much gone, and that’s probably a good thing

– Rory