Since at least the announcement of the Daguerreotype in 1839 by the medium's original self-promoter Louis Daguerre, the medium of photography has been a cultural and technological phenomenon in a modern world. Photography is and always has been a powerful force in people's lives, and never more so than today. Images are tied to culture, are in our DNA, and have become inseparable from politics, economics, and social issues. Photography comes to us in 2009 with a rich and complex history, and photographic images are born into a world that gives them context and meaning. Images have become the ultimate mass media, crossing language barriers and being transmitted to the furthest corners of the planet in fractions of a second.

Over these many years, the medium of photography has been used as a tool by a great many hands for a great many purposes. Today in 2009, we are too sophisticated not to recognize that each decision a photographer makes in the production and presentation of his or her work represents a philosophical stance. These choices in the working process, and there are many, become inseparable from the work, the artist, and ultimately the medium itself.

The relationship between a photographer and his or her representation has, unfortunately for the world, become the most important relationship in the world of photography. It is a relationship that began to dominate the medium in at least the early 1980's and has continued to do so until at least very recently. It has been a co-dependent relationship built not around creativity or the desire to do something useful but around the profit motive and selfish gain. Since the beginning of this movement at the start of what historians often call "The Age of Reagan," photography as high art has been less concerned with art or society than with producing a profitable commodity. So-called art photography over this three-decade period has been in the hands of unartistic money managers, market analysts, dealers, collectors, and an elite over-class of artists that they have created. Historians may well say that in the Age of Reagan, art photography for the first time in its history was lead not by artists and practitioners, not even by curators, critics, or intellectuals, but by financial markets.

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The Age of Reagan was a time when the have's took more from the have-not's. Despite great advancements in all areas of knowledge, and despite the potential for a largely fair, just, and peaceful society, the Age of Reagan was an age of secrecy, deception, repression, violence and greed. It was a time when self-interest and irresponsibility, when getting all you could at the expense of everyone and anyone else was not only tolerated but celebrated. Reagan's era, roughly 1980-2008, was the era of disposability, the quick fix, celebrity over substance. The art world marched right along through a time of unparalleled profits for a tiny few and starvation for so many others.

On television, in newspapers and magazines, the photographic image was front and center in this campaign of misinformation. Through sophisticated, and well-researched methods of advertising and propaganda, the public over this period was lulled to non-action, sent chasing like a mouse on a wheel for material happiness. Today, we are collectively feeling the effects.

Thanks to the spread of photography education and the rise of photography's status in the world of the fine arts, the 1970's and 1980's saw an exponential boom in the number of artists using photography as a medium. Unfortunately, there was no similar boom in the opportunities for these many new photographers as a new formula for success began to emerge. For real 'value,' not too many could share in the 'success.' It appears, though it is still too early to know for sure, that there was no artistic development, no artist or movement or thought that had as great an influence on the art of photography than the influence of money during this era. Unfortunately for the credibility of the medium, at a time when photography and photographers had a chance to reject the overwhelming forces of the era, to oppose the profit at any cost ethic and distinguish itself, it and they overwhelmingly did not.

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In the 1990's, as the financial markets seemed headed for permanent growth and prosperity during the Clinton portion of the Age of Reagan, the money in photography got substantially bigger and the influence of non-creatives even greater. Again the number of practicing photographers increased dramatically, thanks in part to the new (though highly unlikely) possibility of 'making it big' in the art world. What young artists wanted was fame and fortune, and their teachers and mentors tried (almost always failingly) to teach them how to get there. Individual prints made from infinitely reproducible negatives and 'files' by living photographers began to sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars on the way to millions. The jump in prices paid for photographs was drastic, climaxing in the '00's, and signaling the point at which 'art photography' truly entered the world of high finance.

Dealers during the '90's and '00'sbecame increasingly shrewd, and developed methods for increasing their 'bang for buck.' Photographs being shown at the major contemporary galleries continued to grow larger and larger. Print scale became the new financial frontier as representation encouraged its artists to make more expensive prints that could be sold for (and more easily justify) the dramatically higher prices. The cost involved in making such large works, and the equipment and technology necessary, made access to the so-called best venues nearly impossible for all but a tiny majority of artists backed by significant money. Dealers also began to convince artists that seriously limiting the number of prints in "editions" would be mutually beneficial, a practice that has been handed down to a new generation of artists without barely a discussion of the implications involved in such a decision.

As a result of the influence of big money in photography, what the public has been exposed to over the past twenty-eight-or-so years has been the work of a small cadre of artists shown over and over again. As a result, the audience has been given an extremely limited glimpse of the photography being made during this period, limited almost exclusively to new works by these dependable artists (living mostly in a handful of places like New York, London, and Paris) promoted by a coterie of galleries, dealers, and collectors (most of whom also live in New York, London, and Paris). Protecting this cadre's investments has become the overwhelming factor influencing who and what has been presented, championed, and seen.

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Over the past decade the medium of photography has been in a period of massive technological upheaval. A tipping point has been reached, a polar shift from analog forms to digital ones that has revolutionized not only image-making but information and communication. Today, technology is being used not only as a tool of the powerful to retain their privilege but as a democratic tool bringing access and opportunity to many who never had it before. For the first time, thanks to this revolution almost any person can be connected in seconds to almost any other person, creating for the first time in history what might be approaching a truly global society. Much like in the mechanical revolution, in the digital revolution the very nature of time has changed because the way we do almost everything has changed. Information, ideas, and images in 2009 flow freely and quickly, and now they are even beyond the reach of presidents and Supreme Leaders. This technological revolution in conjunction with the recent upheavals in the global economy, looming environmental catastrophe associated with global warming, an energy crisis, and significant changes in the face of power appear to have come together in an historic era of re-examination. It is, most hopefully, the end of an era and the beginning of a new one.

During his campaign to win the presidency in 1992, Bill Clinton hung a sign on the wall of his office: "It's the economy, stupid!" For the past few decades the art of photography has far too often been about economics, the art of representation turned into the art of "Who's your representation?" Though the 1980's, 90's, and 00's will likely be judged an era when huge advances in the art of marketing photography far exceeded advances in the way that the art of photography functioned in the world, it appears that the Age of Reagan is over. It feels as though a tipping point has passed, that the art bubble of the past thirty years has popped, and that it is only a matter of time before photography exhibit the effects. It is only a matter of time before new paradigms take shape, and we find ourselves in a new world.