What is modern photography? and How do we understand?

Every person with a camera thinks that he is shooting a modern photo. Is it so?

Let’s understand together what is modern photography,

what and how to shoot, what to become a modern photographer?

People who work with modern photography are usually called not photographers, but contemporary artists, because it often happens that they work not only from photographs,
but also other media, and sometimes they don’t even press the camera button. In fact, we are talking about modern photography with modern art,
Modern photography flourished after the 19th century. Everything that was taken before is called modern art photography.

Let’s see now, how can we distinguish modern photography from the rest? Let’s look at two important areas in modern photography: conceptual photography and interdisciplinary photography.

A conceptual photograph is a photograph that explores itself: how a photograph functions, according to what laws and how it interacts with the viewer, what photograph is like art. Such a picture often works in dialogue with the history of art and the history of photography. Conceptual photography refers to the intellectual understanding of what he saw and does not work with the concept of “beauty”, and does not reproduce the beauty of the surrounding world.

Interdisciplinary photography is a photograph that works in interdisciplinary and intercultural spaces, examines, through photography, topical issues of modern philosophy, religion, science, psychology, sociology, and even politics. These works raise such topics as everyday life, people and society, environmental change, migration, globalization, media, society, etc.

Modern photography, of course, can immediately solve conceptual, interdisciplinary and intercultural issues in one project and even in one photo. It solves important issues of modern art, acts as a media of modern art. Also, it does not reproduce the beauty of the surrounding world, without good reason since art is not about learning photography

Let’s look at the example and try to summarize and finally figure out what is a modern photo and what it is not.

In this photo, the contemporary author shows us a great mastery of the best photographic equipment on the sea. As a result – a photo of fantastic sea water.
Although the author has taken this photo now, this is a vivid example of not modern photography. This is pure fine art, that is, artistic photography.
It only demonstrates the beauty of the world in a particular place. There is no modern context, no current issues of the day, no interdisciplinary dialogue,
it does not reveal anything new to us about photography.