I think any subject is still up for grabs. The unwritten gripes about all these subjects is really HOW you've seen them photographed. Probably a million times, exactly the same way, since 1930.
I happen to be sick of photographs of Wyoming's Tetons. I go there a lot, and i've been seeing paintings of them that look like Thomas Moran's, and photographs of them that look like Ansel's (which also look like Thomas Moran's) for most of my life. But a couple of years ago, when I saw Friedlander's photographs of them, I was thrilled ... here was work that came out of HIS way of seeing, not out of someone else's version of someone else's version of Thomas Moran. It was refreshing and inspiring.
But I still have pet peeves ... cliches that are guilty until proven otherwise:
1. Lighthouses
2. Sunrises, sunsets, or clearing storms
3. Closeups of any part of a barn
4. Closeups of anything made out of adobe
5. Anything involving an aspen grove
6. Anything involving Yosemite valley
7. Incan, Aztec, Mayan, or Druid ruins
8. Monument fucking valley. Or the equivalent. Or any view from inside a slot canyon.
9. Any mountain stream photographed with a slow shutter speed
10. Any Western sky, photographed with a red filter
And the all-time most heinous one of all:
11. Any "landscape with hot babe"
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