boring

[pmun]

I recently posted my site link as part of street photography issues on another forum. The response was very interesting. To my surprise, what started with indifference, turned to 'it's boring' then some people even became frustrated that I was defending the project conceptually. 'But it's still boring....' The overall ability/will to engage conceptually was appalling.

Here's the question: Can photographs (or any other object for that matter) be inherently boring or is it in the way people look at things?

(I couldn't possibly ask this question there, people just wanted to look at more photos of interesting people doing interesting things and say ‘great capture’).

 

[Sonnar Brian]

Boring means different things to different people. I think paintings of soup cans are boring, others call it art. If the photo's are just random snaps of a street scene that might have well been done by an intervalometer, they are probably going to strike most people as boring. If an interesting event "triggered' the photo, it is likely to not be boring to as many people.

Best to put the photos up and let people judge for themselves.

 

[Chris101]

I find internet critique useless at its worst, and entertaining at its best. It is rarely insightful and only occasionally helpful.

Boring means that you have failed to engage the viewer into thinking beyond the physical image they have before them.

 

[antistatic]

Imagine if members of that Forum of Philistines also visited other forums to do with rangefinder cameras.

Your thread generated 119 posts of "unwillingness to engage conceptually" (admittedly many of the post were your replies). As an impatial observer I thought the discussion was robust and many responses, including yours, were well thought out.

My impression was that many, but not all, people remained unconvinced by the worth of your project which is an opinion they should be permitted to hold and defend.

My answer to your question is that of course boring is in the eye of the beholder but when enough eyes behold this, maybe they are onto something.

 

[pmun]

Best to put the photos up and let people judge for themselves.

It's not so much the judgement that I'm interested in here. It's more what underlies the judgement. For example we can say that a pebble has roundness as an inherent value. But some people seem very assured to say those pebbles on Brighton beach are boring (there are just so many of them).

Take one out of context though, put it next to a nice piece of driftwood and make an arrangement - same pebble, different response. I suppose one of the issues at stake here is the ability to imagine - bring something to your viewing and not to expect it all to be spoon-fed to you.

 

[pmun]

My impression was that many, but not all, people remained unconvinced by the worth of your project which is an opinion they should be permitted to hold and defend.

Of course they should, that's a given and I wasn't disappointed that people found my project boring (I can see why that said that).

What I think surprised me was the refusal or inability to consider that there might be something to the project that they had not realised and that realising it might be fulfilling. The evidence suggesting this is the virtual absence of questions throughout. In seemed very much like intellectual laziness or even fear.

My answer to your question is that of course boring is in the eye of the beholder but when enough eyes behold this, maybe they are onto something.

There's another way of looking at this - if enough people subscribe to a particular view then it's often tempting just to subscribe yourself without giving it much thought (someone else has already done that for you - haven't they) - sheep mentality.

 

[pmun]

I find internet critique useless at its worst, and entertaining at its best. It is rarely insightful and only occasionally helpful.

I know what you mean - this may well have something to do with the internet simply not holding poeples' interest long enough.

Boring means that you have failed to engage the viewer into thinking beyond the physical image they have before them.

I think that's an aspect - but if it's all up to the photographer, what does that leave for the viewer? To sit back and be entertained - a quick look at this one, one eye on the telly, hold a converstation, and have several other tabs on the go, oh look, how boring - next tab, I've got to go now - I'm on the phone and there's someone at the door.

 

[OurManInTangier]

I don't believe that any object is inherently boring, however it is down to the photographer/artist to make such objects into things of wonder...or at least interest.

Was it Walker Evans who photographed tools? There's a (German, I think) couple who photograph water towers and blast furnaces under the same lighting conditions as part of an ongoing project.

No matter what you photograph opinion will be divided just as interest will. Some get it whilst others don't. Some are interested, others are not. I imagine Phillip Jones-Griffiths found many of Martin Parr's projects to be boring, this doesn't make it so or make Phillip Jones-Griffiths intellectually lacking or lazy.

I'd be interested to know more about the project you talk of, is it something you could discuss here?

 

[Pickett Wilson]

pmun, while I'm a photographer, my response to looking at photography is like most non-photographers I suspect. I look at a photo and either like it or don't. It takes me about the same amount of time it took the photographer's camera shutter to capture the photo to decide whether I like it.

If I like it, then I might spend more time looking at it. In fact, I usually buy books of photography because I want to spend time with the images, but the initial accepting or rejecting happens in a moment. You either grab me or I'm gone.

Street photography seems most appreciated by street photographers. I don't get it. There are a very few exceptions, but for the most part street photography looks to me like random photos of people walking on the street. Or sitting. Or laying. Boring. I don't know the people. They aren't doing interesting things. I see them every day on the streets.

I think you are just working in a genre that relatively few people have any interest.

 

[nzeeman]

i think i am expert in this because i think my photos would be usually qualified as boring. i rarely shoot people - i just shoot some buildings i like...
to answer your question i think that there are some photos that are boring - if nothing happens on photo like those buildings i like - it is boring. also i think that that don't mean it is bad photo - sometimes it can be enjoyable to look at it...

 

[Pickett Wilson]

I don't think you can say any photo is intrinsically good or bad. Boring or interesting. It's always in the eye of the beholder.

 

[pmun]

I look at a photo and either like it or don't. It takes me about the same amount of time it took the photographer's camera shutter to capture the photo to decide whether I like it. If I like it, then I might spend more time looking at it.

I know what you mean here, I have a tendency to browse through a gallery and walk off if they don't grab me.

But I also remember when I first started looking at 'art photography' or conceptual photography 25 years ago. I would just buy these 'boring' photo magazines hoping there was something there if I tried hard enough. Whether there was anything there or not is a different matter, but I enjoyed the pursuit and learned a lot.

 

[antistatic]

Let me see if I have got this right. If someone finds a photo boring it is because they did not give it enough attention and it is the viewer's job to make that effort even when the photo failed to engage them on first viewing. Or is it that we should make a serious effort to understand why we are bored by a particular image and not just move on to the next distraction in our ADD lives?

 

[MCTuomey]

if you're a professional, you probably measure the worth of your work in the marketplace: how often people buy and how much people will pay for your pictures.

if you're an amateur, i don't know what measure matters: casual internet critique; more serious but brief critiques from photographers who are more capable than you; academic or seminar-based critiques.

what are you trying to accomplish with your project? if casual internet responses are your goal, then "boring" is just as useful as many others. one question is whether that kind of response will change your pictures at all. will it?

 

[BillP]

I followed the thread on the Leica Forum with interest, although I did not contribute. I also followed the link and took the time to look through the body of work being offered up for consideration. I found your photos uninteresting - not quite the same as boring, I think you will agree - and could not find anything in them that either engaged me as a viewer or provoked any thought whatsoever, beyond that this was a work in progress and should be viewed in that light.

You are being disingenuously selective in this thread, I fear, and playing to the crowd. Alongside the many comments from people who found your project "boring" there were many others who took the time to engage and offer you constructive criticism.

My view was that the thread was in and of itself more thought-provoking than your chosen subject matter; indeed one poster commented as follows "OK, you just want words-words-words to go on-on-on, as a sign that you're "thoughtful & inquisitive"? Those who disagree about either the work or the discourse are "judgmental & dismissive"?

An odd view of both photography & criticism.

Perhaps the thread itself is a kind of performance art to you?"

I think that comment, incisive as it is, plays to what has brought you to RFF to "air your grievance". of the 119 posts to that thread, 47 are from you. The next most frequent poster weighs in with 10 posts. You have an emotional attachment to your project - understandably - but you are not listening to the feedback you are getting. You also chose to start your thread in the M8 sub-forum, rather than one of the photo forums - if I wanted to discuss the aesthetics of an image I would not do so in a sub-forum where people gravitate to discuss technology rather than technique. It was subsequently moved by a moderator to the People photo forum, where it rightly belonged in the first place.

I know that there are many on RFF who would not normally consider visiting the Leica User Forum - personally I fail to understand why that would be the case, but there you go - but I would encourage anyone who feels moved to contribute their views to this thread to go "back to the source" and form your own opinions before shooting from the lip.

http://www.l-camera-forum.com/leica-forum/people/88999-non-classic-shots-m8.html

Regards,

Bill

 

[Pickett Wilson]

I find the lower halves of random people walking on the streets even more boring and uninteresting than whole people walking on the streets. I just don't see the point of these kinds of photos. But, then, I'm no fan of street photography anyway.

 

[pmun]

Let me see if I have got this right. If someone finds a photo boring it is because they did not give it enough attention and it is the viewer's job to make that effort even when the photo failed to engage them on first viewing. Or is it that we should make a serious effort to understand why we are bored by a particular image and not just move on to the next distraction in our ADD lives?

That's up to us. For me I always get more out of a photograph if I think about it and reflect, after all there must be a reason the person has taken it.

 

[pmun]

what are you trying to accomplish with your project? if casual internet responses are your goal, then "boring" is just as useful as many others. one question is whether that kind of response will change your pictures at all. will it?

I'm questioning what photography is and its relationship to its featured subject matter.

No, that kind of response will not change my pictures. I'm half way through a four-year project.

Photography for me stimulates fundamental questions concerning relationships. To have a worthwhile discussion, we have to get beyond the 'boring' and 'great capture' stage and of course that depends on peoples' willingness and ability to take part. Photography is a discourse after all.

Having said that, I did get a lot out of the thread in terms of clarifying it in my own head.

 

[Oscar Levant]

Maybe the photos are really boring.

 

[Pickett Wilson]

Viewers have no responsibility to think deeply about photographs. I don't think photos, in general, are part of a dialog. They are given and sometimes received.

What questions about relationships do you think your project asks? I'm not being provocative. I'm rather literal minded and need this kind of thing pointed out to me.