In a recent Brooklyn Rail interview, the painter Gary Stephan approached the political role and significance of art from a postmodernist perspective. "[A] foundation of the Modernist argument is the idea that the text is open and that the readings of it are co-constructed by the object and the viewer," he said. "But what’s worth remembering is how new that construction is because it’s replacing, at least in France, David and Ingres, who made paintings that are completely authoritative, that were supposed to have one reading and only one reading […] painting had been an instrument of state authority and was designed to tell the viewer that the state was in charge, you’re in good hands, everything’s okay. With Cézanne, you get something that comes along and says, no, it’s all up for grabs […] The bourgeoisie are coming into the world, they’re disrupting the dualism of the ruling class and the peasantry and everything is suspect, the roles, the positions in society, the very objects, including the painted objects, are all being reevaluated."

It seems we are undergoing a new period of reevaluation something like the Modernist one, but instead of "disrupting the dualism of the ruling class and the peasantry" it's proposing disintermediation on a vast scale.

If one creates one's own surroundings, one creates one's own reality, yes, but far more importantly, the reality you make yourself is a challenge, conscious or not, to any authoritative version of events. Without really realizing it we've gone a step beyond Cezanne's proposition (or Roland Barthes') that reality is a matter of co-creation. Which do you trust more: a Twitter photograph sent in by a witness to a rally, disaster or crime scene, or the "official" photograph published by newspapers the next day? And what does that say about culture as "an instrument of state authority"?

In a recent BuzzFeed piece, John Herrman posted a series of screengrabs of images on Instagram taken by witnesses to dramatic events, together with the comments on those images from major news outlets offering publication (though not, it would appear, money) to these avocational photographers who happened to be in the right place at the right time. In one way this seems to suggest that "professional" photographers are no longer needed as much; in another way, the growing sophistication and interest in making our own recordings and images of events might mean that these skills, being better understood, will eventually be all the more highly valued. Already it seems better, truer, to think of fine photographers like Soqui and Dermansky as gifted fellow-seekers, leaders, teachers, than it does to think of them as having a job apart from our own.

That immediacy and connection goes both ways, too: it's very stimulating for an artist to communicate with fellow artists at a higher level of understanding, more interesting to engage with the world more fully.