his argument hinges on authenticity. photography, which was once the ultimate means of capturing raw truth, has been irreversibly diluted by the proliferation of digital manipulation. this is undoubtedly true. digital manipulation has definitely changed the landscape of photography forever, calling any single image’s authenticity into question. authenticity, however, is not gauge of an art form’s pulse, but rather of an artworks value, and in the end that is what his argument boils down to. value. “photograhy is dead” because present technology makes it’s too easy to create a good image, and thus devalues all images. i can sympathize with this point of view, very much so (i try never to mix my digital manipulation with my photographs of great truths, artistic guilt and all) but to declare an art form dead, meaning of course, without value, is never smart. after all his reason for declairing it dead is that as an art form it is more widespread, taken out of the hands of the few as it were. technically precise or poigniant photos can be manufactured now, rather than coaxed with skill and patience from the world, and in my opinion his main problem is not that this is now possible, but that the techniques are so widely taken advantage of. after all, this is the same man who a few years ago put out a book “exposing” the secret techniques the masters used to get such perfect detail and realism, namely camera obscura. isn’t that kind of technological cheating as well using his argument? anyhow, the bottom line is photography is mutating. that is all. it is most certainly not dead, but more alive and varied than ever before. is it still valuable? can a piece on the wall still comand hundreds of thousands in rube art collector money? I’ll wager yes. but then, i’m a young man still, without a career’s worth of images, the value of which i need to defend.

so what can be done?! well, i advise slang makers and media retards to go back to the future. if your going to beat everyone over the head with the same mind numbing phrases at least try using ones sooooo out of date that they might sound new again. try the hard boiled 30’s and 40’s for instance (notice the definition of rapper? hmmm, sounds decidedly modern) or how about the 20’s (remember, beef has already been recycled so it’s off limits) or hell, why not the the 1800’s? they loved guns and hookers in the old west too. you’d think what was good enough for bogart or al capone would more than suffice for the likes of ludakris or matt lauer. if you absolutely insist on trying to be “original” at least browse the pseudodictionary for some imaginitive substitutes. shape up or suck nevada gas you twittock twists and dumb ginks.