The 'Post-Photographic Age'

I have been reading 'Hockney on Art: conversations with Paul Joyce'. Excellent read. The main theme of the book is Hockney's extensive exploration of the relationship of photography to painting. He, of course pushed the bounds of photography with his polaroid joiners and large scale photo-montages. But he always came back to painting as primary. In 1999 Hockney said:

"You know it was Ingres' great rival, Delaroche, who exclaimed on seeing a daguerreotype. 'from today painting is dead'. Perhaps he meant that chemicals were to replace the hand. It was, of course, a prophetic statement, and one which has entered the common language to be acepted up till now as self-evident truth. But it's not a truth for all time! It's perfectly clear to me that the period of chemical photography is over. The camera is yielding itself up to the hand, those hands which now operate computers. We have entered the post-photographic age. For an artist, this has to be the most exciting time of all."