What next for photography in the age of Instagram?

In our image-propelled social media era, some photographers fear for the future of the art, while others are galvanised by it. As technology increasingly shapes how we see and share the world, how is photography changing in response?

In 2012, I wrote an essay about the shifting nature of photography in an era of unprecedented image overload. Back then, Facebook users alone were uploading 300m photographs a day, while the number of images posted on Flickr and Instagram had exceeded the 11bn mark. I quoted the American artist and writer Chris Wiley, whose 2011 article, "Depth of focus", in Frieze magazine, had expressed the anxiety of many practitioners about "a world thoroughly mediatised by and glutted with the photographic image and its digital doppelganger".

Wiley's conclusion was pessimistic: "As a result, the possibility of making a photograph that can stake a claim to originality or affect has been radically called into question. Ironically, the moment of greatest photographic plentitude has pushed photography to the point of exhaustion."