Exposure Interest

I've noticed that many people seem to be absolutely fascinated by long-exposure and time-lapse images, which is somewhat comical and interesting to me. I've seen many friends "Ooo" and "Aah" over a photo simply because the exposure time was four minutes. Yes, that photo may be beautiful and yes, there may have been much more thought and effort put into exposing the film, but there was a point in the history of photography when every image was long-exposure. Very early work, such as the beginnings of Daguerre and Talbot, employed exposure times between two and thirty minutes. For portraiture, this meant that the subject was held still with head-clamps and sitting armature, and would later have their unblinking eyes drawn onto the image. In street photography, it meant capturing cities seemingly devoid of people. At this point in time, it was simply the necessary exposure to create the image; that's just how the camera worked. So, why is the long-exposure image so popular right now? 

Perhaps, movement. Many trending subjects right now, when considering exposure times, are night skies, light paintings, and ghosting. Themes of time, tangibility, and the supernatural abound, along with the big question of "Hey, how'd you do that?" Which can only lead me to the conclusion that many people are much more interested in process and aesthetics than content. That's not to say that it is condemnable to create work based solely in aesthetic pleasure, but creating work just to try out new techniques may result in work that is shallow of content and leaves little to discuss. 

Everyone wants to buy pretty pictures. Unfortunately, not everyone wants to buy enlightenment.