Whoa... Newsweek's Peter Plagens is beating the photography is dead drum. Plagens' article titled "Is photography dead?" takes the same tone we've been hearing about with photojournalism. Photoshop makes realism anachronistic. Photography, the argument goes, has lost its way in the world -- "It's hard to say "gee whiz" anymore," Plagen notes.
"Art and truth used to be fast friends. Until the beginning of modernism, the most admired quality in Western art was mimesis—objects in painting and sculpture closely resembling things in real life."
Plagen's argument seems warranted because of photography's relationship to the apparent "real" in front of the lens. Now, with digital processes, what's set before the lens, as we are quickly discovering, is not always real at all. Nevertheless, to raise the question of photography's death is a bit of an academic cul de sac. Going in, doesn't mean you'll get very far.