Tom C wrote:
We and I may be mixing up the terms art and good in this discussion...
oh well...
We can save the discussion about whether photography is art for later. I
asked what makes a good photograph.
There can be be no single answer to the question because photographs
are taken for a variety of reasons. Some photographs are intended as a
form of artistic expression while others may be simply documentary.
Some are documentary of an event, say a party, while others are taken
for more mundane reasons. I believe some photos are taken for
practically no reason whatsoever
or maybe no obvious reason?
- the person has a camera and
therefore is using it (similar to what happens if you give a child a
camera and they mostly, indiscriminately, start walking around
actuating the shutter). (Like Eggleston, IMO, wink)
Eggleston may be many things, but indiscriminate isn't one of them. He's
quite deliberate in what he shows, but it sometimes takes some work to
see what he's revealing.
There's at least two ways of defining good when it's applied to photography:
1. Good because the image fulfills the requirements for which it was taken
Are we talking just record-keeping? Here is a scene and here is what it
looked like?
2. Good because the image possesses some attributes that make it stand
out in a positive way
Attributes such as? And why positive?
Individually we all define good somewhat differently.
Sure. And we are all, when we reach a certain level of competency,
convinced that the way we do it is the way everyone should do it. Nature
of the beast, you know.
It seems to me that invoking/or not an emotional response is not the
whole thing either. First, one viewer is different from the next, so
will be impacted differently. Second, the viewer may have an emotional
response to the image that has little to do with the merits of the
image itself.
Example 1: I love my baby, so a picture of my baby invokes an
emotional response.
Example 2: I remember the day JFK was shot, so when I see images of
that traumatic event, it invokes an emotional response.
In both examples above the subject matter alone is what may produce a
response. I would think that a snapshot baby picture or a hastily
taken image documenting an event, likely does not qualify as art
unless it invokes a response for reasons other than the subject matter
itself.
And what I'm trying to do, somewhat clumsily, is get you to articulate
those reasons. What I'm trying to get at is that we all have our
templates, as photographers, and sometimes to our detriment. How often
do we take the lazy way out and just rely on the rule of thirds to
compose a photo instead of taking the time to think about what
composition really suits the subject matter best? The rule of thirds is
not the only game in town, and the same can be said for any other
compositional/sharpness/exposure/color habit we get into.
The same can be said for how we view photographs. We like best those
that are like what we shoot, as photographers. The trick is to separate
our photographer selves from our viewer selves and go from there. Can we
do it? Can we look at other photographs, or do the years seeing the
world through a viewfinder ruin that for us?
In the GESO I just posted of wide angle portraits. Are they good or
bad? Are they art? I didn't intend them to be art. Nor would I ever
submit that they are such. Yet, I took them with the sole purpose of
invoking an emotional response (which from what I read is either
amusement or horror). Are they good? IMO, yes, but only in that they
invoked the response I was hoping for). Are they good because they
possess some other qualities, such as excellent composition, lighting,
exposure control? No.
19 is a lark. A million is art.
In the end, I suppose, the only statements I can really make that are
unassailable is "I like that image" or "I think that's a good image".
My thoughts and emotions are my own and require no validation. If
someone disagrees, their opposite statements are just as valid.
True. I really don't care if anyone else likes Eggleston's work, but if
you're going to say a photo, any photo, is "crappy," it's only fair to
ask why.
As I said, I think the PDML exhibit in Chicago was a far better
collection of images than the Eggleston exhibit. That's my opinion.
For instance I saw nothing artistic or good about the photographs of a
pile of garbage or the black porcelain interior of an oven.
It's probably easier to define a bad photograph as opposed to a good one.
A bad photograph is one that a person sees once and never cares to
look at again.
Tom C.
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