“Dixie Dixon would photograph her stuffed animals as a child. Now, she’s one of fashion photography’s brightest stars, and one of the first sixteen Nikon Ambassadors in the United States. “I don’t think I’d be myself without being a photographer,” the native Texan explains. “

If you’re gonna claim to be someone to aspire to photographically, and in doing so claim some affinity with the glory days of photojournalism by appropriating its technology (in this instance a plain prism 60’s era Nikon F), then at least satisfy us that you know how to operate the camera. To begin with, you might want to learn where you look into the plain prism viewfinder.

Let me get this out of the way: I’m not ragging on this young lady simply because she’s ‘attractive’ in a social media sort of way. I’ve looked at her work, and it’s competent, although nothing special, nothing you won’t see thousands of times over wherever you look. It certainly doesn’t stand out in a way that would warrant a cush advertising gig with Nikon. I suspect she’s a “Nikon Ambassador” because she’s cute and social media savvy. In fact, I’m positive.

Let’s call it the “Overgaardization” of photography as a practice. Being a photographer is now a ‘lifestyle.’ It’s about being hip and technologically and media sophisticated. It’s about ‘branding’, about creating a narrative about yourself that in most cases has nothing to do with reality. It’s about creating the reality. It’s how some blue-collar woman with a high school degree from some backwater town becomes “Princess Joy,” or her grifter husband goes from working in a sawmill to claiming he’s royalty…and a company like Leica, inheritors of a proud photographic legacy, embrace them as spokespersons for their ‘brand.’ It’s all about being ‘beautiful’ and using beautiful things and having those beautiful things define you. That’s why you should buy your Nikon or your Leica. It’s called selling the sizzle and not the steak.

As for the quality of photographic output, basically irrelevant now, given how easy we can duplicate a look or a style with a few keystrokes. Anyone can do it competently. Just push a few computer buttons and we’re all Richard Avedon. What’s really important is being thought of as hip while doing it, and that means carrying the correct camera and looking the right way while you do so. Knowing how to use it, apparently, optional.

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