Every Photograph is worthy..................

[nic bower]

I expect most people (creative people,photographers) constantly question their endeavors; why do I take photographs? Is this photograph good? Is this photograph beautiful,artistic, challenging?etc. In the end

when I look at any photograph produced in a different time or generation, I find interest in it. It could

be a standard family snap shot but if it was produced 30 or more years before - it invites or commands

a deeper interest or delight or pleasure from fresh eyes not belonging to the time when the photograph

was produced. What a fantastic. amazing medium photography is; almost every photograph from anyone

ever taken will be considered valuable by someone.

[Xiao Cai]

But not every one feels the same way - someone enjoyed and someone disappointed. The question here is what worth the photograph is and who decided this worth...

[Matt Laur]

While I suppose I agree with the notion (that even the most pedestrian snapshot of your shoes, taken while testing the autofocus on your camera) MAY be of interest (say, to whatever the shoe-specialist version of an archeologist or anthropologist might someday be called... cryptopodiatrist? paleozapatologist?), I think that perhaps your theory breaks down. It breaks down under the sheer, crushing mass of information that now makes up the photographic leavings of our culture. The task of wading through it for meaning, years after the fact, may be a classic case of dimishing returns. Hence the value in the time that curators, collectors, or even the photographers themselves take to tag, categorize, or gallery-ize such things. It's just too much, otherwise. Of course some future archeopterix (heh!) may find what she's looking for just by pawing through it all, such as is left in displayable form, but relative to the effort, I can't say that every image has real value. Hell, I know that most of mine do not, not even as mere curiosities. There isn't a single thing I've shot - except for a person or two that might become famous later as examples of turn of the new century ne're-do-wells - that aren't better recorded and presented by other people already. It is an amazing medium... but many non-amazing uses of it exist. In fact, what is the opposite of amazing (please don't provide a link back to my portfolio, that would be salt in the wound!)?

[ellis_vener_photography]

"why do I take photographs? Is this photograph good?"

 

if you are asking yourself these questions, it is a good thing - -it means you are finding and challenging your limitations.

 

"What a fantastic, amazing medium photography is." Yes it certainly is.

[saskphotog]

I've seen several facebook pages that contain images that I believe would be better for everyone, including those in the pictures who might be "interested" I suppose, if they were just deleted.

 

I do agree with the idea that lots of "snapshots" become valued by family and friends over time, but I would never go so far as to say every shot made in a bar with a cellphone camera is worthy.

[felixg]

I have to pluck up the courage for this [gulp] but ... I'm with Nic on this one.</p>

<p>There are different <i>kinds</i> of value and worth ... kinds, not levels.</p>

<p>Most of the emphasis here in photo.net is on functional or 'high art' worth -

functional being, just for example, anything from social documentary to wedding

or sports work, while by high art I mean the image as an æsthetic object in its

own right.</p>

<p>Those are both important and worthwhile. But they are neither the only kinds

of worth nor more important than other kinds.</p>

<p>Snapshot photography is many things: again taking only two examples, it is

individual self examination of a unique kind on a mass scale and at the same

time a single social artefact.</p>

<p>I think all those inane shots of Bob and Tash getting progressively rat-arsed

in a bar in Ayia Napa, and the growing pains of Sam (age 3 months), and the

repetitive strain of Aunt Agatha recording every park bench in Christendom, are

wonderful and epic.</p>

<p>Yes ... unlike Larry Cooper, I would go so far as to say that every cellphone

snap is worthy. Not worthy or epic in the same way as <i>Moonrise over

Hernandez, New Mexico, 1941</i>, nor for the same reasons, nor on the same

scale, nor for the same people, nor even in the same cultural universe ... but

equally so, yes.

[michael_darnton1]

I'm with Nic. I find almost every photograph interesting and always have--that's basically the reason I'm interested in photography. They aren't all of equal art or equal value, but they tell you something about a world you haven't seen, when they're someone else's, and to me, that's de facto interesting. I can easily get past the technical difficulties when someone's handing me a free window into his mind and life.

 

Here's something I've been enjoying lately: http://leumund.ch/v3/flickrspy It's a non-selective stream of pictures that people are putting up on Flickr--three seconds for each, 24/7.

 

To me, the challenge has always been to take this kind of stuff and put it out in a way that's creative and maximally interesting, not randomly organized, but my raw material is similar to everyone else's. To discount pictures because they're not technically or artistically perfect is the ultimate insult to life itself.

[mrstubbs]

"In the end when I look at any photograph produced in a different time or generation, I find interest in it."

 

And that's what makes it worth anything at all...for me anyway. The smile that crosses my face when I imagine grandchildren discovering the images in a box under the bed one day. That they will see what I see now. That if I do it well...their enjoyment will be greater. Rah! CLICK!

[aplumpton]

Have you ever sat through a slide show that was poorly put together and contained

too many photographs of the same thing, when you know that the author of it could

have made a very interesting presentation had he been selective in his choices?

 

Have you been faced with someone showing prints of his or her vacation and thought

after a half hour that perhaps you would have appreciated 20 or 25% of them, but not

all?

 

Everyone has something different to say through their photos, which is fun and

occasionally revealing and something of value added to our experience and/or

pleasure.

 

But give me a break. There are so many photos to look at and often the presenter

has little special to show or is not able to recognise that which might be special and

of interest so he can "crop" his presentation. You can usually tell when something is

of interest before youeven see it, as the photographer has already recognised that

and his eagerness to share is evident.

 

Consequently, I cannot agree that every photograph is worthy, but I do think that

every different source of photographs (that is, different person, different period or

place from which the photographs came, etc.) is worthy of attention.

[felixg]

Arthur - you're right about those interminable slide shows. But, that I think is an argument against sitting through long slide shows rather than against the worth of the slides.</p>

<p>I don't really want to sit through even a slide show of images by Ansel Adams, Eve Arnold, or whoever ... I want to decide for myself which images I skip past and which I linger over.</p>

<p>We can only ever see an infinitessimally tiny sample of the imagery available ... each of us will select that sample in our own way, and each sample will be different.</p>

<p>The real question we have all stepped past, when we say a photograph is or is not worthy, is: worthy of <i><b>what?</b></i> I suspect we all have different answers to that question, and upon those is predicated our reply to Nic's.

[saskphotog]

I had a conversation with a student the other day about how to make a good impression with her job application. We got talking about things, and I mentioned that often employers will check out Facebook to see what they find. All the blood drained from her face. Such a tactic, and such consequences of public confession had not occurred to her before.

 

Suddenly a lot of pictures she thought were "worthy" lost their worthiness and got deleted from her pages.

 

Worthy of what? is a good question. I really do think there are images worthy of almost nothing. An image derived from sitting on a photo copier is not worthy. Any image that one would find necessary to hide from large numbers of people is probably not worthy of much.

 

I don't feel any need to find value in something just because someone at some point thought it was a good idea. In fact, I think we do the world of art a disservice when we try to hard to find "worthiness" when it is truly not there.

 

It's like giving everyone who shows up for the race a participation medal. It makes all medals less valuable, and lessens the value of the race itself.

[hu_xingjin1]

Agree

[jtk]

If they're all "worthy," none have value.

[nic bower]

then they all have value !

[jtk]

Nic, yes.

 

If they're all worthy, you've made the point that they're all trash.

 

Are you sure you see your own work that way? Sounds depraved to me.

[nic bower]

I think Anthony got the hook right away. The thought came to me while strolling down a

street in Saigon and popping in to a small used book shop crammed with boxes of old

photographs. B&W family snaps, landscapes everything - all these pics were 20 years old

or more, ordinary pics that had been discarded or bought from deceased estates. It was

quite amazing to see so many people searching through these (valueless/worthless)

photographs of strangers and being enthralled and making sure they looked at every pic

in the boxes.

We all get very selective and high-brow regarding our own pics and there's a constant

ramble particularly on this forum re; Art versus Photography. I think people loose track

when discussing this medium - photography; even at it's most dull and boring evokes

more than a second look (even the phone pics) by so many more people that an average

painting regardless of where it hangs.

[iron shore gallery]

I suppose from now on, since digital photography and massive hard drives, everything that everyone does will be documented, and saved on hard drives somewhere. Our tracks and submissions here on PN may be read by eager students a hundred years from now, reorganizing the early days of the "everything is saved" era?

 

But when I was a boy, photography wasn't an Art form. It was a craft. Only family would take the time to look at old photos. There were photos in history books and the magazines. But few people saw aesthetic value there. They were historical documents.

 

The "craft" aspect of photography still lurks behind many arguments On Photography. Film versus digital. Documentary versus "artsy" photography, and what "tools" are "allowed" when using PhotoShop.

 

I suppose to me, photographs are still about time and how it is tearing away at the now.

[saskphotog]

"I suppose to me, photographs are still about time and how it is tearing away at the now."

 

That sounds terribly gloomy. I don't see it that way at all. How can time tear away at the now when the now is the only time that ever exists? Everything else, past or future, is just imaginary.

 

Time can't "tear away at the now"; time *is* the now. Nothing more.

 

Nothing less.

 

They may be historical documents, but photographs are not the past captured on a piece of paper or in 0's and 1's on a hard drive. They are just documents. Like all documents, some have importance for various reasons, and some are just bird cage lining.

 

How do we know which are what, is always the question.

[tom nb]

A famous jazz musician once said that there were two kinds of photographs. Good and bad.

 

When I look through photographs I took, say, 15 years ago, it's true that some of them have improved with age - they've gained a kind of historical or nostalgic value.

 

But some of them are just bad. Notwithstanding that everything is subjective ergo nothing can be "bad" etc. they are in some sense unrepresentative of whatever they were trying to capture, and/or aesthetically displeasing.

 

If I felt that there was no distinction to make between good and bad in my own photography I wouldn't bother trying. I.e., if every photograph I took was of equal value, I'd quickly get bored and do something else.

[saskphotog]

"If I felt that there was no distinction to make between good and bad in my own photography I wouldn't bother trying. I.e., if every photograph I took was of equal value, I'd quickly get bored and do something else."

 

Absolutely.

 

That sounds to me like it is one of those things that, as soon as someone articulates it, I intuitively understand is true, without any need to explain why. We all know it is true, or likely we ALL would have moved on by now.

[wenti duo]

Only when I think a photograph is interesting, it is interesting. When I think a photograph is valuable, it is valuable. When I think a photograph is interesting and valuable is also depends on my mood.

[iron shore gallery]

Larry, I agree that everything exists in the now. And I enjoy and love photography, the history of photography, and making photographs.

 

Saying that "time is tearing away at the now," is my feeble attempt at being poetic.

 

>That sounds terribly gloomy. I don't see it that way at all. How can time tear away at the now when the now is the only time that ever exists? Everything else, past or future, is just imaginary.<

 

I agree. And when we are contemplating a photograph, we are gazing at a document about an event that happened in the past. There is an immediate nostalgic flavor about most photographs. The image pulls us back into the past. A time when the now was back then.

[george.craft]

I almost discarded this photo because I thought that it was out of focus and very grainy. It was my first attempt at night photography. It is a shot of the Space shuttle 'Endeavor' leaving earth into a low cloud base on 11mar08 at Cape Canaveral. It was fun to be there and witness this but I really wasn't happy with the photo.

[nicole_everson1]

I have to agree with ya... now to a photographer a lot of pix r just snapshots, or just suck... but to a mother even a poor quality cell phone shot is priceless... I think to someone every pix is priceless... think of a mother who has a miscarrage, those ultrashound pix r the only pix she has of her child.. But I do agree with other ppl here that it is a good thing to hold yourself and your work to a hight standerd... I look at shots I took jsut a few months ago, adn they look like crap.. lol but a few months ago I thought they were amazing.. lol as u grow as a photographer u will have higher standerds...

[mtiller3]

o.k. guyz and galz............this horse is duley beaten to death!!! Next!