I just became aware of this thread. Thanks to all contributors, there's some real food for thought and lots of useful links in here. Off topic? I don't think so. Photography itself is rather off the track compared to what it was just a few years ago. Camera phones today are much more advanced cameras and much more advanced computers than either cameras or computers were only a decade back. This creates a creative market way beyond the industrialised parts of the world that have been participating until recently.
And since this thread is drifting so widely anyway:
I have friends who live in wooden shacks out in the middle of nowhere in rural parts of Asia. Most of them have never had access to computers or cameras. Now, for $50, they can buy a camera phone that enables them to document and communicate their lives in a way that for them was pure science fiction only a couple of years ago. While high quality image capture and the creativity associated with it has been an elitist industrialised world phenomenon until now, with western travel photographers crisscrossing the world with their Hasselblads and Nikons, documenting the "unknown", the "unknowns" are now about to do that documentation themselves, thus unleashing the creative potential of literally billions of people.
There's a direct line between the $50 Samsung and the $20,000 Hasselblad and all the various iPhone, Nikon and Leica dots in between; in a historical perspective, they all represent bleeding edge technology. But while that kind of technological achievements used to be the domain of men in white laboratory coats, it's now put to good, creative use for an increasing part of the population. And although very few will turn into professional artists, making a living from their photography, this development is changing the lives of a great many people and the political direction of whole nations.
Just thought I'd mention it
