Anyone can take a picture … but …
May 17, 2008
"Photography is the easiest thing in the world if one is willing to accept pictures that are flaccid, limp, bland, banal, indiscriminately informative, and pointless. But if one insists in a photograph that is both complex and vigorous it is almost impossible"- John Szarkowski
The idea that anyone with a "digital" camera can take a photograph is quite true, but making a good photograph is as difficult today as it was 50 years ago. This reminds me of the pointless idea that the current large volume of digital images has changed in any way what makes a good photograph. Of course it hasn't. Only thing is that digital tools have enabled more people to explore photography as a way to express and discover, and this has led to better chances to create great images by anyone with an artistic "spirit".
What remains as difficult as it has always been, or even more difficult now, is to repeat one great image after another, to create a cohesive and compelling body of work, to create projects that are unique and have impact ... to create photographic projects that are both "complex and vigorous". This remains a skill limited to few.
Miguel Garcia-Guzman
Posted in Photography
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May 18th, 2008 at 2:05 pm
perfect! i’m going to quote this in my class lecture tomorrow!
May 19th, 2008 at 6:02 am
Remember someone stating in the NY Times (in the mid 90s just before the digital revolution) that “at no time in the history of photography have so many bad pictures been taken so well.”
May 19th, 2008 at 7:57 pm
MG-G, Awesome food for thought. My questions;What about the intermediaries and credential authorities that allow work to cross this threshold? Hasn’t digital photography and the internet produced a parallel industry of subjectivity poohbas as well? All this mediocrity has to get graded some place doesn’t it? Shouldn’t we also look at what influences have affected the flourishing of “elevated” imagery?
May 20th, 2008 at 7:06 am
“at no time in the history of photography have so many bad pictures been taken so well.”
Great quote … indeed.
Miguel
May 20th, 2008 at 8:01 am
I would thoroughly agree with the notion that littled has changed with what it takes “to create photographic projects that are both ‘complex and vigorous’.”
BUT, if you can sift through the morass of “so many bad pictures (that have) been taken so well”, I would opine that the digital revolution has allowed the number of good picture makers to grow exponentially.
Not that making a good picture and body of work is “easy”, but, the mechanics of making pictures are, in fact, much easier than they were in the good ‘ole analog days of film and wet darkrooms. What this has done is to make it much easier (and, let’s not forget, much less expensive in the long run) to experiment with the medium’s possibilities, and, in some cases, to create new possibilities as well.
So, I would be inclined to say that photography is very alive and doing very well - better than ever, in fact.
May 20th, 2008 at 4:40 pm
It’s definitely much easier to experiment now, and it may, in fact, also be cheaper- in the long run. But it can also be argued that the up front (digital) costs are definitely more prohibitive.