Ocular Octopus

Essentially, the Photobook World is small, but it punches way above its weight just because there are so many people with so much to say involved in this world. And when that energy ends or shifts elsewhere, or if it gets too incestuous, pretentious or self-consciously cool, or if it just reduces into an essential pointlessness, as it will one day do, then something else will have a Golden Age; the exhibition, the print, the projection, the decorated plate, whatever. Except of course it won't be a Golden Age at all. It'll just be smoke and mirrors. Because that's all anything is.

There isn't much to learn about photography. Everything that you need to know you can find out by reading the instructions on the box. The rest is practice.

... the Syrian civil war may be the first truly postmodern conflict, at least when it comes to its images. Both sides are engaged in a perverse competition to show the world, and each other, how ruthlessly barbaric they can be. Aided by new technologies — the cellphone camera, YouTube, Instagram, social-media sites — these images of cruelty ricochet around the globe. The traditional role of war photojournalism has been turned on its head: Rather than expose atrocities, photographs now advertise them.