Overdone Cliche Subjects

[paulr]

When all else has been explored, the cliche will be the last frontier of art.

well, it was a recent frontier anyhow. the postmoderns loved a good cliche, just as they loved a good high-art sacred cow and a good pop culture icon. anything obvious to appropriate.

if they're the final frontier then it's time for me to pack my bags.

[tim atherton]

I pointed out one example of a portfolio on a subject that was entirely original (in Lens Work) and someone else pointed out the site of that Russian photographer, which was also mostly quite original (bumble bee in glass jar ? Weston? Adams?) so no one can't really claim that "everything that can be photographed as been photographed" (Reminds me of the US congressman who wanted to close down the US Patent Office because he claimed everything that could be invented had been invented!)

I suppose we can always look for interesting views of the same old subjects, or to present the old subjects in a new way. That's not bad, but it is still derivative. When it comes to selecting the subject matter, finding something entirely new and non-cliche to photograph requires the extra dose of something called CREATIVITY or ORIGINALITY - the factors that separate the photographer-as-technician from the photographer-as-ARTIST.

.

This is one (of many) of the reasons I like Sugimoto's work - who else thought of photographing movie screens for the whole length of the movie? Or Modernist architecture at 2x infinity (and finding the strength of the design of the best one still comes through), or photographing mathematical forms and more...

[paulr]

I suppose we can always look for interesting views of the same old subjects, or to present the old subjects in a new way. That's not bad, but it is still derivative. When it comes to selecting the subject matter, finding something entirely new and non-cliche to photograph requires the extra dose of something called CREATIVITY or ORIGINALITY - the factors that separate the photographer-as-technician from the photographer-as-ARTIST.

I'm really not convinced by this. I don't think you need novelty to avoid a cliche or to be origninal. Novelty itself is of very little value. I admire Sugimoto's work, too, but the novelty aspect (the idea no one happened to have had before) is low on the list of why I like him. What's great about his work is that it conveys a feeling about life and about the world that is uniquely his. I sense what fascinates him, what inspires wonder in him, and this combination of things is fresh and unique. Much moreso than a particular subject or technique that I haven't seen before.

Great original art doesn't usually come from someone trying really hard to do something new. It usually comes from someone having something to say, to observe, to share ... something they feel needs to be revealed but that so far hasn't been. It usually has something to do with their lives, and the raw material and subject matter of people's lives don't vary so drastically within a culture. Picasso painted a lot of women. Sometimes he even painted Delacroix's women. Weston photographed shells, vegetables, trees, rocks, and western landscapes. Beethoven wrote with the same 12 notes and mostly the same instruments as Mozart. Shakespeare wrote about love and death, ambition and betrayal. He got a lot of his plots from traditional stories, and from other writers like Bocaccio. All of these innovators are admired for their vision and perspective--for the unique form they bring to their subjects and materials, not the subjects or materials themeslves.

At the opposite extreme, it's easy to find empty novelty. An often noticed failing of Surrealist art is invention without discovery. It really doesn't take much imagination to put wings on a clock, or to make a hat melt into a puddle. To do it convincingly--in a way that suggests what in the artist cares about (besides the pursuit of novelty ...) is another matter.

[cyrus]

Great original art doesn't usually come from someone trying really hard to do something new. It usually comes from someone having something to say, to observe, to share ... something they feel needs to be revealed but that so far hasn't been.

I agree with this totally. I don't mean to imply that it is sufficient merely to find a new subject to photograph - the subject is merely a representation of an idea, after all. But absent that, I'd settle for some new subject matter too.

In any case, what's clear is tha re-shooting what eveyrone else has been shooting for 50+ years is neither new subject matter, nor is it saying anything new so I just wish photographers had something to say other than "Gee, look at this pretty barn door...and this pretty car in the fields...and this pretty mountain..." etc ad nauseum.

[Michael Daily]

"Overdone cliche" is a cliche and redundant.
Michael

[paulr]

"Gee, look at this pretty barn door...and this pretty car in the fields...and this pretty mountain..." etc ad nauseum.

yeah, some subjects have become so thoroughly associated with certain kinds of photographs that it's hard to separate the two. not impossible, but experience teaches us to bet our money elsewhere. hence all the lists early in this thread ... and the many subjects that kept showing up on all of them.

my cliche test is really a simple one. when i look at a picture, do i get a sense of the way the photographer sees the world? or only a sense of the other photographers he admires?

[Ralph Barker]

"Overdone cliche" is a cliche and redundant.

I was waiting for someone to point that out, Michael. Thanks. Hasn't fussing over what is cliche become cliche in itself?

As to the original topic, I'm not an art purist, so I sort of ignore the whole cliche thing - unless it's an obvious rip-off of someone else's idea. There are cases of people in different parts of the world coming up with essentially the same idea at about the same time, both of whom thought it was fresh and original. To me, that doesn't make either cliche, just a testament to over-population.

Click on, and damned be him (or, her) who cries, "Hold, enough!"

[Steve J Murray]

my cliche test is really a simple one. when i look at a picture, do i get a sense of the way the photographer sees the world? or only a sense of the other photographers he admires?

Using your test Paul, could it be that the "look" of film is now a cliche? How about Large Format?

Just playing Devil's Advocate ;>)

[paulr]

Using your test Paul, could it be that the "look" of film is now a cliche? How about Large Format?

Just playing Devil's Advocate ;>)

you might be playing, but it's an interesting question. i think not, because someone like friedlander can take a clunky old hasselblad with an ancient square format, load it with black and white film, and continue to do work that looks like nothing but friedlander. It doesn't even look too much like old friedander ... so you can't accuse him of ripping himself off, either! just my opinion, of course.

on the other hand, some photographic tools do impose such a strong look that it's tough for a photographer to use them and not produce work that looks like everything else done with those tools. the whole diana camera movement suffers from this, i think. some of the work is stunning ... but i often can't tell one person's work from another's.

Winogrand said something similar about very wide lenses. he tried working with a 21mm lens for a while (for 35mm) and gave up. he said the lens gave a distinctive look to every picture, but that he believed there's no one way every picture should look ... or something like that.

[Michael Daily]

When Henry Holmes Smith, prof of Photography at Indiana Univ., asked Ansel Adams, with whom he was teaching at Yosemite, whether he would do the same images over again if he had the chance "to redo his life", Adams replied that he would not as people would only "let" him do the same landscape-type images for which he was famous. Henry told us in class that that was one of the saddest things that he had ever heard--that a master was trapped by his own work and felt that people would not look at anything else that he tried.
Michael