With all the fuzz about IA image “stealing” illustrator job, I am curious about how much photography changed the art world in the 19th century.
There was a time where getting a portrait done was a relatively big thing, requiring several days of work for a painter, while you had to stand still for a while so the painter knew what you looked like, and then with photography, all you had to do was to stand still for a few minutes, and you’ll get a picture of you printed on paper the next day.
How did it impact the average painter who was getting paid to paint people once in their lifetime.
One topic that hasn’t been raised in this thread is the effect of photography on artistry. Due to having a medium that could, well, photographically depict reality, painters changed in the way they depicted reality.
In the beginning expressionism, pointillism and so forth became more prominent. It was not recreating reality, it became infused with the emotion of the artist. Van Gogh, for instance, did not do realism at all, but showed how he felt through his work.
Later styles got more abstract, like cubism, dadaism and surrealism in the beginning of the twentieth century. Later abstract expressionism, minimalism and pop art.
So photography changed the way painting was executed, it forced the artists to reinvent what painting was.
New media change the meta, that’s what’s most exciting to see. How people will find new methods of expression given the updated tool set.