Visual Noise: Why Is It So Difficult to Notice a Good Photograph Today?
26 • 03 • 17Liliom Szabó
We live surrounded by noise: the sound of traffic, the murmur of a beach, the chatter of a schoolyard, the roar of a concert, or the constant hum of a shopping mall. Visual culture has its own form of noise—visual saturation. How can we still recognize a meaningful photograph within the endless sea of pixels in today’s image-based culture?
Drifting Past Good Images
Rebecca MacMillen, a professor at the University of Texas, examined her students’ relationship to photography in her study Overexposed Digital Photos: The Psychological Effects of Visual Overload. She found that, on average, her students store more than 630 images on their phones. These collections, by their own admission, are a struggle to organize. Photographs documenting everyday life accumulate continuously without constant review. They are often transferred to cloud-based services in the hope of gaining storage space—a practice that carries significant ecological consequences.
Storing 1 GB of data requires about 5 kWh of energy. Many users rely on cloud services to store and back up data, including photographs and videos. As a result, usage can easily reach 200 GB, or about 1,600 kWh of electricity. This exceeds the annual energy usage of many households. Yet the ecological dimension of digital image storage is only one part of a broader problem: the overwhelming expansion of photographic production in today's visual culture. To see why recognizing a meaningful photograph is now harder, we must examine how photography's role has shifted with smartphones and social media.
Sociologist Martin Hand notes in Ubiquitous Photography that the production and circulation of images have expanded dramatically in contemporary digital culture. In the early history of photography, the image functioned as a one-way form of communication from the creator; the viewer simply observed it—sometimes for extended periods—because there was no continuous stream of new images. They had no choice but to surrender to the photograph, whether it pleased them or not. However, with the migration of images into the digital space, significant changes have occurred, especially among younger generations, who now use photography as a means of interaction and social connection.
The overload of images comes partly from the pressure to communicate visually. Contemplative viewing has been replaced by reactive behavior: posting images, adding captions, responding, and following trends and expectations. Social media users’ tastes are becoming increasingly homogenized, while standardized editing styles further reinforce visual uniformity.
These platforms, in turn, produce viewers who are inattentive to images of genuine value. In his book, Martin Hand argues that theories of digital photography need stronger ethnographic and empirical foundations. It’s not enough to discuss only technological developments. We must also examine usage patterns, identity, and broader social effects. Only by considering how these elements interact can we draw meaningful conclusions.
It’s also important to note that the proliferation of photographs extends beyond social media. In daily life, we see more photography on billboards, interactive displays, and commercial images. These visual stimuli add further strain to our attention.
Within this environment, the meaningful photograph becomes a needle in a haystack. The sheer volume of images dulls our senses, making it increasingly difficult to pause and notice the solitary image carrying true significance.
Few viewers have the perceptual filter to recognize such images, and even fewer consciously apply it. The experience resembles eating a hamburger from a fast-food restaurant: it satisfies at first but leaves you feeling empty soon after. In much the same way, we become numb to images through constant exposure.
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Fotó: Visitor at Paris Photo, 2025
A large proportion of contemporary image-makers are driven not primarily by quality, storytelling, or technical refinement but by sharing their lives, establishing visual connections, and joining digital communities. In this system, a photograph is considered good if an algorithm shows it to as many users as possible—or if it is commercially profitable.
In many cases, the image itself is commodified, functioning as a vehicle for promoting a person or a brand. Most photographs reach us primarily through screens, where we often spend just fractions of a second on each image. In these conditions, details, perspective, and even image quality matter less.
In his 2014 book Post-Photography: The Artist with a Camera, Robert Shore discusses how contemporary photography increasingly operates within an already vast archive of images. Rather than simply producing new photographs, many artists now select, organize, and recontextualize existing visual material.
Fred Ritchin presents a similar argument in After Photography, suggesting that in an image-saturated world, the central challenge is no longer the production of photographs but the interpretation and navigation of the vast quantity of images already circulating online.
Silence Within Visual Culture
Amid this visual saturation, there is a growing desire for quieter forms of visual experience. Minimalist photography and slow, poetic approaches have flourished in the counterculture. Artists such as Hiroshi Sugimoto, Rinko Kawauchi, and Uta Barth embody this trend. Their work seeks visual manifestations of silence. Rather than conveying much information, these photographs create space for contemplation and personal interpretation.
In his 1993 book Modernity and the Hegemony of Vision, David Michael Levin investigates—through the writings of philosophers such as Plato, Descartes, Merleau-Ponty, and Foucault—whether modern thought and culture are structured around an ocularcentric (vision-focused) paradigm. Levin suggests that, instead of visual dominance (the eye suppressing all other senses), we need alternative, deeper modes of contemplation. These should rely not on automatic perception but on conscious, attentive observation.
In the essays collected in the volume, Levin traces the philosophical development of visual dominance and examines its limitations: the impoverishment of sensory experience, the marginalization of bodily perception and hearing, and the possibility of consciously developing alternative modes of attention.
John Lane, in his essay The Spirit of Silence: Making Space for Creativity, written nearly two decades ago yet still relevant today, argues that silence and solitude are essential conditions for creativity and inner renewal. According to Lane, the constant noise of modern life erodes deep attention and disrupts our inner rhythms. To support this argument, Lane presents figures such as Henry David Thoreau, Emily Dickinson, and Thomas Merton—individuals who experienced silence as a productive creative space. At the same time, he criticizes contemporary consumer culture and modern educational systems that estrange individuals from the experience of silence and from cultivating an inner creative environment.
Debates about what makes a photograph truly good may continue indefinitely. But before we can recognize such images, we must create the conditions that allow them to become visible. Awareness becomes the key: by reducing our visual overload, we may once again give ourselves the chance to discover the needle hidden within the haystack.
Works cited
Hand, Martin. Ubiquitous Photography. Polity Press, 2012.
Lane, John. The Spirit of Silence: Making Space for Creativity. Green Books, 2006.
Levin, David Michael, editor. Modernity and the Hegemony of Vision. University of California Press, 1993.
Ritchin, Fred. After Photography. W. W. Norton & Company, 2009.
Shore, Robert. Post-Photography: The Artist with a Camera. Laurence King Publishing, 2014.
