Two things you should read; this coilhouse post introducing “The Decline of Fashion Photography”.
The main article traces one art form from the fifties to the present-day in twenty-eight photos and comments. Her argument is that the form has descended from a heyday to a low point nowadays, with either too little art, or too little fashion.
In a wider sense, it’s interesting to consider whether art forms generally go through such rises and falls. This has to be quite focussed; I think arguing for a golden age of cinema, or of music, would be ridiculous; but arguing for the heydey of zombie explotation movies, or mod, or house music, that’s possible.
For me, the interesting question is around sci-fi short fiction. Recently, it’s been argued and riffed on that science fiction short story mags like Analog have been declining in circulation; does this mean that form of written, printed short fiction drawing to a close? Is it being transformed by the internet? free electronic distribution of magazines like hub, reworking the form into flash fiction, and changing the medium by podcasting (eg pseudopod) suggest the forms mutating rapidly and that the classic sub-10,000 word, printed paper story might well atrophy away. After all, while people might not be comfortable reading a whole book on a screen, they’ll read an awful lot of short pieces.
PS: I’d recommend coilhouse; it’s a interesting art blog focussing on alt culture.
