Does it have to say anything?

[scheinfluger_77]

...Response to "what does this photograph say?"...

..."I am"...

The best thing said so far in this discussion IMO. This is already understood in the other visual arts such as painting or sculpture. It doesn't hurt to learn a new style or school in a medium, but if you understand why you shoot what you do and why the subject moved you in the first place, the pressure to conform to the latest popular style for its own sake becomes irrelevant and ineffectual. Many of my images don't say "I AM", but some do. Somehow Rodin's "The Thinker" comes to mind with your statement Robert.

[Robert Langham]

Everyone here also knows that often raw subject matter says: "I'm NOT." Or "I'm not ready". Or "save your film and move on." That's one I wish I could crack every time. Unfortunately I have a process where I have to gnaw my way in, via lesser images and it costs film and time. A lot of human experience is that way: stupid ideas at least getting you started toward a better and more perfected idea. I wish it was more direct. I have that dream every now and then, that I EXACTLY understand how to make a perfect photo, every time. Exhilarating dream. Then you wake up and can't.....quite....remember the exact approach. It was something VERY simple. Like a crescent wrench.

An old variation of a Zen saying would be: When the photographer is ready, the subject appears.

[Jim Jones]

When people speak, it is not necessary that they say anything. However, it is usually better if they do. For a rare few, just the sound of their voice is enough.

[Drew Wiley]

My own credo is that nothing should be too obvious. A print can be impressive and catch the eye, but the primary content should be capable of being "discovered" by the viewer over time or be otherwise below the surface. I utterly hate any form of "let it all hang out" photography - either than cutesy stuff so popular now, reminiscent of "gotcha" advertising images (grab you attention, but only hold it a few seconds), or anything with an obvious socially relevant or politically correct readily apparent message (news coverage is a different category), or anything merely scenic. All that kind of stuff bores the hell out of me, including stuff that is academically artsy/fartsy in vogue at the moment. A print, especially a large-format print, should have layers. Some of these might be quickly accessible, but within them there should be something that rewards over repeated viewing, over many years. If I can hang one of my prints on my own walls and still enjoy it six months later, I figure it's a success. Twenty years later, well, it's happened. But I've even had the audacity to hang some big rich detailed prints in commercial settings where everyone initially asked why on earth so much conspicuous effort and technical fuss was spent on a landscape "subject" they couldn't even relate to. But then several months later I got feedback, how certain images were just starting to grow on them, and they were starting to see things like I had, along with discovering all kinds of little intricate features day by day. Of course, I mixed in a few relatively decor-ish prints in
too, which I'd never put in a gallery venue, just to bag their attention initially and justify their commitment of all that wall yardage to begin with. I don't think
very many people are going to understand the majority of my prints, which I shoot for myself. Some do.

[paulr]

The best thing said so far in this discussion IMO. This is already understood in the other visual arts such as painting or sculpture. It doesn't hurt to learn a new style or school in a medium, but if you understand why you shoot what you do and why the subject moved you in the first place, the pressure to conform to the latest popular style for its own sake becomes irrelevant and ineffectual. Many of my images don't say "I AM", but some do. Somehow Rodin's "The Thinker" comes to mind with your statement Robert.

I'm not convinced. Tagging a wall with spray paint says I Am. So does peeing on a fire hydrant (at least to other dogs). Or trolling an internet forum.

Which is not to say that these couldn't be mediums for art (the first often is). But that good art better do more than assert your existence.

[Lenny Eiger]

"If you do not breathe through writing,
if you do not cry out in writing, or sing
in writing, then don't write, because our
culture has no use for it."

~Anaîs Nin

[Drew Wiley]

Yeah, Paul ... in my dictionary "street art" is still "vandalism" and the people who do it have less brains than the dogs peeing on hydrants, because at least the dogs aren't deliberately inhaling toxic fumes. Tagging does say something about who was there; it says, "I am stupid".

[koh303]

Yeah, Paul ... in my dictionary "street art" is still "vandalism" and the people who do it have less brains than the dogs peeing on hydrants, because at least the dogs aren't deliberately inhaling toxic fumes. Tagging does say something about who was there; it says, "I am stupid".

You are right, we are much better off with the hoards of "artists" swarming every "art" fair (read crafts) telling everyone about their latest amazing BW experience photographing some chipping paint, or a falling over barn, or some rust, or a boring landscape. In all cases, you really have to wonder, WHY are they wasting everyones time? Oh wait, thats kind of what happens here more often then not.

[Peter Lewin]

Two excerpts from Emmet Gowin's interview in "Hidden Likeness:"

"What was so powerful about the photograph? I felt that in a photograph you could not be sure exactly what the intention was, because the seeming code of the picture is always under suspicion and unclear. ... The meaning belongs in some way to the scene itself and to the moment, not to the photographer's intention. ... While I didn't show my parents my photographs - I thought they were too private and too secret - I still believed that no one could have said exactly what they were about. Nonetheless I felt I knew what they were about, and of course, most viewers immediately think they know what a photograph is about."

"You can't really know what you're doing and do something new. When you do something new, you intuitively realize that maybe there are good reasons why you took that strange step that seemed unexplainable. ... Something about the process of art-making allows you a kind of relax of purpose: you need not know exactly what you're doing to still be active and at least aim in the general direction - the target - which is the mystery of life."

And one extra anecdote from the start of the interview, which Gowin tells with a smile:

"The day I graduated with my Master's degree in photography, my mother told me, "We're so happy you became a photographer." I looked at her stunned, because I knew that her intention and my father's had been for me to follow him [in the ministry]. ... So I stared at my mother, and finally she said, "Oh, we were so afraid you might become an artist!" I think of that period of my life as simply treading very softly around the edges."

[paulr]

Yeah, Paul ... in my dictionary "street art" is still "vandalism" and the people who do it have less brains than the dogs peeing on hydrants, because at least the dogs aren't deliberately inhaling toxic fumes. Tagging does say something about who was there; it says, "I am stupid".

What a surprising and open minded opinion. Now I know who turn to for nuanced ideas about this. Or anything.