Anything left to photograph?

Every key on the piano has been played, every guitar string plucked, and some drums have been hit in every spot possible, but people keep creating new music.

Your premise reminds me of the quote by one of the former directors of the US Patent Office. He commented that he had seen about everything and that there was nothing in the world left to invent.

 

This quote was recorded sometime around 1900. Huh, something to think about!

 

Loren

<em> You cannot make something any more real by painting or sculpting it, than you can by using any other media, such as photography...</em>

<p>

This is true, but I was really referring to the expression of an idea. You can paint (or sculpt) anything you can imagine, but you can't photograph it. Thus photography is at something of a disadvantage, since the other arts can depict reality (just as photography can), but photography is limited in its depiction of the imagined (where other visual arts are not, or at least are much less so). So whereas painting can go though schools such as cubism, pointillism and abstract impressionism, it's difficult for photography to much more than mirror reality (unless you allow liberal use of photoshop and count digital graphic art as photography - if you do that then the divison between photography, drawing and painting becomes very blurred).

<p>

In a more general comment on John's question and some responses, I don't think it was ever suggested that every possible image has been taken, just that the vast majority (if not all) images are more or less duplicates of what already exists. Clearly all images have not been taken. I could take 1 image per second for the rest of my life and all would be technically unique. The question is if any of them would ask or answer any question that had not already (photographically) been asked and answered.

Why do you think so big? - Look around at your neighborhood. Many mothers would like pics of their playing child. I hadn't pictured every girl I was in love with. Wouldn't it be nice to go through old pictures of toys you loved in your childhood? - I can't complain about having nothing to do.

Dead birds from West Nile Virus. I smell a book there somehow.....

not everything has been photographed.

 

and not all things can be directly photographed.

 

styles and methods have yet to be concieved of.

 

the innovations to be made are all creative. technology is merely something that either sits in the background or gets in the way.

 

want a good way to be creative? look around at what everyone else is doing.

 

now do something else.

There is nothing left to photograph if you think photography is about externalities. It is not.

I find it a risky attempt to translate the need or desire to make a photograph into ideas or words.

When one says there is nothing to photograph, one could mean there is nothing I want to photograph. Saying there is nothing to photograph would mean that photography's illusion which is to stop time has actually happened in the real world. Nevertheless, time is still not paused and no two photographs have ever been the same.

Even if they look exactly the same, two photographs are not the same.

Photographs are not only about visuals, they are about time.

Yes there are styles and ways to take pictures and when it is said " there is nothing left to photograph" what is meant is that one is stuck behind conventions and cannot free himself from it.

The big frustration among photographers is their inability to truly create. In some way, they are always dependant on outside events.

In my opinion, beeing closed minded, saying there is nothing left to photograph will prevent you from having your eyes open which of course will stop you from seeing the photographs that have not been taken. In addition, the hope to succeed will be gone.

Photographers taking pictures of people taking pictures of people taking pictures....

Fundamentally bad premise.

 

Originality doesn't have anything to do with photographing an original subject. Was Adams the first person to photograph Half Dome? Was Ed Weston the first to photograph a nude woman? Was Cartier-Bresson the first person to photograph people in the street?

Is there anything left to photograph? Absolutely there is! Even if everyone

else in the world has photographed say Mt. Everest, I haven't photographed

yet. That's all that really matters. I haven't come close to photographing

everything I want to photograph (and never will). It doesn't matter who else

has photographed something or how many times somebody else has

photographed something, as long as I haven't photographed it yet, there are

things left to photograph. And it yes it will be unique, because every

photographer is going to be there at a different time with different lighting

conditions and with different interpretations.

No.

 

 

The last thing left to photograph was photographed on March 23, 1923.

Yes!! Photograph what wasn't there until you made the photo. ;)

Saying that every physical subject has been photographed to the point of cliche is not really understanding the broad possibility's and potential that photography as a medium has to offer.

 

If one only sees photography as a tool for recording the world and everything in it, than one can easely be mistaken that everything already has been photographed since the overblown use of images in every aspect of the media today, and the re-using of those images.

 

But there's more to photography than just pure registration of facts, since photography can also be a vehicle for the more abstract, say the more philosophycal side of life. So has every thought already been photographed? every emotion? every dream? I don't think so and would find it hard to believe if someone told me the contrary.

 

For example take a look at www.braeckman.be

 

I don't have the feeling that they have been done before, since they are unique in their own character, this of course apply's also for many many other work of other photographers.

And when someone does encounter the true cliche in a photograph, then one should not blame the medium and write it of as 'nothing left to photograph' but rather blame the one who used the medium.