Photography is not what it used to be. These days, the medium is proliferating and progressing into a wide variety of different directions. The classic definitions of photography and of the photographer's professional domain are being redefined: the medium is employed by agents, who do not see themselves as photographers, and at the same time more and more photographers incorporate other media into their practise.

Within the modernist understanding of art it was deemed important to try to keep the photographic medium unblemished by other forms of art and culture. In other words, photography's scope was sought limited to the traits that were understood to be the essential of photography; that is, to explore the media specific characteristics and formal problems of this particular medium. Today, it is no longer considered so important to discuss the so-called ontological status of photography or to delimit the field of photography. The credo on media and genre specificity has been replaced by the new agents' oblique thinking and ready flexibility, and the focus has been moved towards an exploration of the photographic as an expressional effect, which may be combined with other art forms in various ways. This effect is not connected with particular materials, forms of development, or pre-determined conventions. Rather, it is a fluent and variable entity that can easily include media and methods other than those normally associated with photography.

In the current issue of FILTER we focus on the changes that the photographic practice is undergoing. We make the magazine available to artists working in the borderland between photography and sound (Jacob Kirkegaard, Paul Kleefeldt), text (Karen Blixen, Eva Tind Kristensen), painting (Gunnel Wålstrand), Braille (Gerando Nigenda), film (Andrei Tarkovsky, Christian Uchtmann), and sculpture/installation art (Thilo Frank). Furthermore, we publish an article by the art historian Christine Gückel, who connects the hybrid experiments of the present day with the avant-garde movements of the 60's and 70's, in addition to an article by the journalist Øivind Holtermann, who discusses the significance of new multimedia productions for press photography.