State of the Arts

So I was thinking about some photography ethics, and about how technology is changing the landscape of photography. These changes have happened and continue to happen at an astonishing pace. Will digital photography be the death of photography (and photographers) as we know (knew) it? Amateurs can get essentially the same equipment as the pros. It's easier than every for anyone to take great photos. So how can one be a photographer? Isn't that a bad thing? It is for some, there's no doubt about that. I thought about painting and printmaking. I had thought that once these art forms had become "obsolete," that is, painting had been replaced in a large part of its market by photography, and traditional printmaking (ie. etching, woodcuts, lithography) had been superannuated by newer printing techniques. This gave me the idea that when an art process becomes "obsolete," ( I realize that's an ambiguous word in this instance, but bear with me) it becomes "fine art." What I'd meant by obsolete was that there was a new, faster, better way to do what the previous medium could do. I'm not an art historian by any means, and maybe this topic has been discussed to death in other circles, but I'm just thinkin out loud here. Any thoughts? Think I'm way off? Let me know. After giving it a little more thought, I figured its just the (for lack of a better word) common stuff that becomes obsolete. That is, in painting, I had originally thought painting, before photography, was about realism and recording events. It's of little coincidence, I thought, that when photography came along, painting started to become abstract. There was no need to paint realistically, photography could do it better and faster. I thought this caused painting to become a fine, or high art. But I realized, it had always been a high art. Michelangelo, Raphael and the rest of the Ninja Turtles were kickin ass in painting long before that French guy with a black box started making chemical paintings with light. So I think what happened with painting, is that the bottom dropped out and it became free to do other things. The guys with the cameras largely took over the realistic portraiture and historic documentation biz. Yea a lot of portrait painters may have lost their shirts. Probably the change was slow enough that they were able to adapt. Being pushed out of that market may have been a blessing in disguise, for painters, and the art world at large, because painters were then free to play with impressionism and cubism and nudes descending staircases. Some photographers today may feel threatened by the wide availability of high quality tools of their trade. Ultimately though it may push them out of some old markets, but into some new ones.