PHOTOGRAPHY is everywhere these days. The popular photo-sharing Web site Flickr is said to have 4 million members, who upload 1 million images a day, and with cell phones now having more pixels than old digital cameras, everything is a Docomo, Softbank, Canon or Nikon "moment."
Of course, not all these images are art. Creative photographers differ from amateurs as they supplement our understanding of the world. But with the personal and mundane increasingly regarded as valid photographic subject matter, it's natural to wonder what role art photographers now play.
Since 1998, Rei Matsuda, curator of the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, has put on a series of shows tracing the effects of modern technology on contemporary Japanese photography. Known as "Photography Today," the first installment, 1998's "Absence of Distance," considered the speed at which images had started to cross cultures and borders. "Site/sight" in 2002 looked at the innumerable images circulating on the Internet. Now, "Resolution/Dissolution" continues the dialogue as digital technology changes the medium. To illustrate this, Matsuda presents three pairs of photographers under the themes of "Society/Public," "Body/ Individual" and "Photography/Image."