On the 'Crisis' in Contemporary Photography

The thing I love and also detest about blogs is the wealth of information and opinions. Comments can inspire discussion and dialogue, but with the experience of my own blog I realized: you can keep some of the people happy only some of the time. Bloggers often link to bloggers with only brief comments about the referenced post (this blog is no exception) despite the outcry for more interaction and dialogue. One post that hit home with me was Brian Ulrich's Where is the Crisis and by the reaction of his audience with 50 comments as of today, it touched a nerve with many others. Ulrich questions why we have not seen in the output of young photographers as much of a reaction to the external conditions, economic and environmental, as we have of the internalized or narcissistic artworks.

In a follow-up to this post, Cara Phillips on her blog Ground Glass states:

Can we pull out of this "crisis" artistically and is there really a crisis? After reading post after post affirming or discrediting the basic sentiment, do we begin to think all as one? There is a sense of community in the internet, but does it force us (or at least our work) to become clones of those we admire? Do we just have to dig a little deeper through all the images to find the quality and what posterity will regard as the important art of our century?