Photography and the Death of Media Literacy

In the shifting landscape of photography, something fundamental is being lost in our ability to read and by extension, also create images with depth. Media literacy, that is to say the understanding of how images function, how they speak, and how they can tell a story beyond the confines of a single, eye-catching frame, has seen better days and I'm not optimistic for the future.

By supporting your local documentarists, me thinks

Whereas the documentary and street photography of thirty plus years ago often offered a social or cultural commentary, today’s visual culture feels notably less investigative. Photography’s journalistic instinct has been significantly atrophied. Before social media, photographic endeavors revealed dysfunction, documented change, or captured political turmoil. Today, content is primarily made to entice. Travel photography, for instance, has abandoned the notion of witnessing in favor of selling a dream. It propagates images that could fit on glossy brochures rather than proposing a critical look at place, culture, or society. The photographer has shifted from observer to lifestyle promoter, from documentarian to aspirational guide.

I recently bought Greg Girard’s JAL 76-88, a book documenting Tokyo in its transitional stage leading to Japan’s economic bubble. His work which is deeply rooted in social commentary, the poetry of transition, and the grit of real places, has been rediscovered in recent years, but not solely for its intent. In my opinion, it is his film-photography aesthetic that has driven his resurgence: neon-lit cityscapes, moody film textures, and an aura of urban nostalgia, all of it captured on real slide film, the ultimate fetish object for analog purists and hipsters alike. What many people seem to forget is that what made Girard’s work compelling in its time was its layered perspective: the way it captured an era and a sociopolitical shift. Yet, in today’s social media-fueled rediscovery, that context is often stripped away. The conversation should be about what the images say, but now it's unfortunately all about how they look.

That is a dangerous reduction.

I struggle to answer a question that seems essential:

How do we communicate the importance of narrative, of sequencing, of series-building to a generation focused on the singular, high-impact shot? Many new photographers are slaves to the one-shot mentality, conditioned by the algorithm to focus on what garners the most engagement rather than what builds meaning over time. I can tell that some of them sense, without quite being able to articulate it, that there’s a call for something more, hence the occasional attempts at diptychs and triptychs. But beyond these isolated gestures, the concept of a body of work remains alien to many of them.

The idea that photography is inherently narrative within a sequence of six, twelve, or more images is simply not part of the visual vocabulary of the social-media born photographers. To them, a strong image stands alone, and anything that doesn’t immediately draws attention is discarded. They will look at a carefully crafted sequence and fail to connect the dots, blind to the dialogue between images, unmoved by the narrative unfolding before them. They will find entire projects “boring” because some images, when taken out of context, appear weaker. They seem to realize that these images serve a structural role, that they provide contrast, rhythm, and depth to the whole.

This lack of understanding is more than just a matter of taste; it signals a fundamental shift in the way photography is perceived. Where photographers once thought in terms of essays, books, and exhibitions, the new norm is the endless scroll; a flood of disjointed, high-impact visuals designed to capture attention in a fraction of a second. As this model becomes dominant, the very idea of long-form photographic storytelling risks fading away. But how could we demonstrate the importance of visual storytelling when photography itself is shifting away from that model?

The skill of building a book, for instance, is extensive. It has its own rules of pacing, rhythm, and juxtaposition. The same goes for exhibitions: curation is an art in itself, where meaning is not just in individual images but in their interplay. Yet, to many younger photographers, these concepts are foreign, because their engagement with photography has been dictated by a medium that does not reward slowness or sequence. They are like the people in Plato’s cave, staring at shadows without ever seeing the fire that casts them. How do we lead them out?

This model of slow, deliberate photographic storytelling still exists—it survives in agencies (like Magnum, VII, Noor) and within certain photography schools—but these increasingly feel like a dying breed. In a world where images are consumed at the speed of a flickering screen, where does the long-form photographic essay belong? How do we ensure that photography retains its ability to document, to challenge, and to endure?

If we care about media literacy in photography, then our role is clear: we must push back against the tide. We must teach, write, and create work that demands to be read, not just glanced at. We must build and support platforms that prioritize substance over style. And above all, we must find ways to reach those young photographers staring at the shadows, because if we don’t, they may never even realize that there was more to see.