The Black Swan

Recently I have been fascinated by the talk about Black Swans in both science journals and the economic press.

What is a Black Swan ?

Until the 18th century, no-one had seen anything other than white swans. Swans being white was an intrinsic part of being a swan, and thus was never questioned, but was simply taken for granted. Suddenly, in Australia, mutant black swans were discovered, and so people had to radically change their understanding of “what is a swan?” This was a massively significant change to people’s understanding – the phenomenon was completely unpredictable before it happened, and this unforeseen event completely changed the way of looking at the swan world.

So, according to my best source of scientific knowledge (i.e. Richard), the Black Swan is used as a metaphor to describe the negative hypothesis problem. No matter how many white swans you see, you can never say that there is no such thing as a black swan. All you can say is that you haven’t observed one yet.

The Black Swan scenario has repeatedly occurred through history. The invention of the wheel, electricity, the big Asian tsunami, even 9/11 (to name but a few, to illustrate the point) have radically changed the way we look at the world.

The invention of the camera was the Black Swan of the art world. It created a whole different way of perceiving art which didn’t previously exist, and thus radically changed the very nature of artistic expression. After that initial and unexpected phenomenon, photography continued in a linear progression from the earliest chemical processes, right through to the modern digital systems. It hasn’t changed much in the last hundred years or so. By that, I mean if you look at a photographer from a hundred years ago, you would be boggled by his huge and archaic large format camera, but you would still recognise him as a photographer (Hi Don! Not that Don is a hundred years old, of course, but he does use a large format camera).
So people now take cameras for granted, and they have become a normal and accepted part of both recording reality and expressing art.

So my argument is that modern photography hasn’t yet seen its Black Swan. But it’s definitely time for the next epiphany of the photographic world.

Despite the best efforts of futuristic and technologically advanced photographers, no-one can predict what it will be. We all have our suspicions of course. It won’t be a new and innovative photographer, and it won’t be a new type of camera equipment, because neither of these would be a Black Swan. They wouldn’t radically alter the way that we understand photography.

The nearest guess that photographers can make about the next Black Swan is that it will be a completely new way of creating images, such as holography. This would indeed be exciting, and would create a whole different way of perceiving art. However, it is an advancement which is happening gradually because the technology is already underway. It has already been predicted, and it is largely anticipated to be a major art-form ten or twenty years in the future. So, arguably by its very nature (i.e. it has been predicted), holography can’t be the next Black Swan.

So what will it be?

Sorry but we can’t give you answers as to what will come next. All we can say it that just because no-one has thought of it yet, doesn’t mean it’s not going to happen.

What will photography be like in 50 years time ?

Expect the Unexpected.



Pretty swan.
(Rich offered to photoshop it to make it black. Sacrilege!)