The UK’s, Daily Telegraph newspaper recently reported that approximately 10% of all the photographs ever taken were shot in the last 12 months.
TWELVE MONTHS!!!
Given the first photograph shot by a ‘camera’ was way back in 1826 by French inventor Joseph Nicéphore Niépce [who – in typical French self-important style, named it ‘View from the Window at Le Gras’] and there are allegedly 3.8 trillion photos currently in existence, that’s bloody amazing.
Of course, that massive impact has been driven by the rise of camera phone technology which is why every two minutes, society takes more pictures than the whole of humanity managed in the 1800’s and why everyday, 300 million photos are uploaded to Facebook … which supposedly represents only 20% of the total amount of photos taken by us every 24 hours.
But that aside, what this means is the subject matter of photos is ‘evolving’ from being significant memories of humanity to the food we eat in restaurants and the selfies that are taken by delusional fools who believe they will be spotted and picked up by a modelling agency so they can be the next Gisele.
Even though most of them stand more chance of being mistaken as a gazelle.
Mind you, if anyone has seen my instagram feed, you’ll realise I should shut the hell up given I’m probably responsible for at least 2% of the global volume of photos. Sorry.