If you look at a lot of pictures, you quickly realize that it's possible to make a good photograph of just about anything. Whether visiting the great pyramids or sitting around your own backyard, there is material everywhere.
Yes, but to quote David Vestal: "The production of well-made photographs is not the point.
Expression is the point."
Everywhere there are subjects that would make good photographs for
somebody, but I don't want to be "somebody." I want to make photographs that have something to do with me in particular.
Yes, on the one hand that's hugely egotistical. But on the other hand, the world contains so many things to look at that I don't feel "generic" photographs are as interesting for most viewers as ones that reflect an individual viewpoint.
Photographers are an exception to that; we seem curiously fascinated with generic photographs. I think that's mostly because of how photographers are educated and motivated, and I suspect it's a key reason why we are susceptible to getting into ruts and becoming disenchanted with what we're doing.
For example, if you click over right now to the
Pop Photo website, you can read a feature in which "experts critique reader photos." There's nothing really
wrong with what the "experts" say about the photos, but the whole process seems to be based on how well each photo fits into some established genre: "This would be a better landscape photo if you did X." It's a bit like going to the dog show, in which there's a set of standards for the "ideal" dog of each type, and the actual real-world dogs are judged according to how far they deviate from those standards.
Don't get me wrong, it works great for dogs. But it's a lousy process for identifying pictures I'm going to be interested in seeing. Edward Weston made brilliant photographs of wet rocks at Point Lobos, and ever since then other photographers have been making Westonesque photographs of varying lesser degrees of brilliance of wet rocks at Point Lobos, and as I write this there's probably some photographer out there
right now making photographs of wet rocks at Point Lobos. Maybe his photos will be 10% as brilliant as Weston's, maybe they'll be 50% as brilliant, maybe they'll be 99% as brilliant.
But I don't care. I'm just not interested in seeing an imitation of Edward Weston, even a 99%-perfect imitation. I'd a lot rather see the photographs that same guy might make because the subject is important to
him, not because it's a subject that he's been trained to regard as "photogenic."
Unfortunately, though, most of the socialization process that photographers go through consists of training them to revere technical and artistic genres. That's why you can go to any county-fair photo contest and see dozens of pictures of stuff silhouetted against sunsets, trees arching over winding brooks, dogs wearing sunglasses, geometric patterns of roofs or stairwells, etc., etc. ad infinitum. Go to more ambitious venues and you can see equally doctrinaire collections of nude-and-glamour shots, angst-ridden street shots, and you-name-it. Even in fairly high-end contemporary art galleries you can see endless arrays of blurry Holga landscapes, mock-monumental macro shots of toys, and whatever else was getting written up in the New York
Times two months ago.
And of course it's still possible to make very worthwhile photographs of
any of these kinds of things. But to do so, you have to be motivated by something
other than the typical conditioned-reflex response; "Oh, okay, a photographer can get attention and validation by making that kind of picture, and I can make one as good as this, so I will." That's only a slightly more complex reaction than a rat pressing a lever because he's learned it will make a food pellet come out. No
wonder photographers get frustrated and jaded, pushing that lever over and over!
Mind you, I'm not saying that pursuing a genuine expressive passion is necessarily going to make you happier. I've concentrated my personal photography on the same subject area for more than 20 years, and I still feel engaged and challenged by it. But that just makes it all the more infuriating when the pictures in my camera don't measure up to the pictures in my head. There's always
more I want to do -- spend more time, work in more environments, pursue more ideas -- and it's just not practical to do it all.
If you care about getting beyond the realm of "genericana," it's almost as if the choice is between being frustrated at not making the pictures you want, or being frustrated at not being able to do a good enough job of making the pictures you want. Maybe a choice of frustrations is the best we can expect out of this whole enterprise! Dang...
