Just as media representations of the artist-as-genius have proved remarkably durable, the figure of the lone photographer is an enduring myth.

[The] figure of the intrepid, typically male, photojournalist is tied up with narcissistic fantasies about the photographer-as-lone-adventurer…the photographer-adventurer who bears witness to the world’s most beautiful and horrific truths has become something of an ego ideal or phantasm haunting all users of the camera. Men, apparently, are particularly prone to its seductive power.

– Daniel Palmer

Palmer, Daniel. Photography and Collaboration: From Conceptual Art to Crowdsourcing. London: Bloomsbury, 2017. p.1–2