Cliché

steve_swinehart · August 7, 2009

One artist friend paints only snowgeese, usually in flocks - he has been doing the same thing for many years and both his expressive and abstract paintings of snowgeese do very well from year to year (sells many in the 0.8 to 14 k$ range). His paintings are all somewhat different. Is this cliché, or style? I think it is the second, but it is a fine line.

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Many years ago I had an acquaintance who did what I would call "formula paintings." He even had names for parts of the paintings, #14 tree, with a #3 sky, and a #5 barn for example. He had galleries all over the US and used to track the paintings carefully so that two paintings of a certain formula never showed up at the gallery at the same time. It certainly was a style of painting, and people purchased them to the tune of about $30K worth per year in 1977 dollars. Not bad for part time work. I would put them in the "art furniture" category - as they were often purchased because the colors complimented the upholstery or carpeting.

steve_swinehart · August 7, 2009

If you simply use a cliché to take the easy way out, that does seem a little fake to me.

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Isn't the question really why are you using a cliche rather than rendering the subject with a personal intent? If you're purposely making a cliche as a statement that's one thing, but if you're merely photographing (or re-photographing) the same old thing or the old same thing - then you're merely replicating and not seeing.

I can set up as many cliché situations as I can find spontaneously.

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Yes, you certainly can - and when you do it artfully to direct the viewer and reveal a specific, personal viewpoint - you're Cindy Sherman with a unique vision. When Joel-Peter Witkin does his version of Canova's Venus, or his version of Durher's Rhinoceros - it's an individual vision as he had the idea within his mind (often worked out through sketching and painting) to see the final work and make the final photograph his personal statement.

When you setup something without intent, or merely to replicate something you've seen, then you are probably into a cliche - or at least within rock throwing distance of the neighborhood.

I'm not really sure I need to see another milk droplet frozen with a flash; or another picture of a colored liquid being splash-poured into a glass or goblet. If the photographer is demonstrating technical skill and proficiency for a portfolio in hopes of getting work - that's fine - I understand the reason for the photograph. I have my glassware photos that we were required to do as part of my freshman photography class so we understood dark line and light line lighting of glassware. Not the least bit original in any sense, but it demonstrated you knew how to light glassware in your portfolio. But, claiming they're unique and an original vision is to deny the thousands or 10's of thousands of the same type of photograph made previously.

unless you are cliché-ing your own style

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At that point isn't it a parody, which gets into a whole different area of expression?

Nothing wrong with a good "hook."

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Unless you're Steve Miller - and then 40 of them won't get you into the Rock 'N Roll Hall of Fame...

KenPapai · August 7, 2009

My take on clichés? No one had taken this shot now at this time, today, in this light, or with this X set of equipment.

Otherwise I'd be bogged down in shooting anything... is this a cliché or not? What can I do to reduce its cliché-ness, if anything?

As a "pappy" I also try my BEST to take the shot better than nearly every one I've seen of same/similar subject previously. Just because you might be in the top 0.2% of all photographers doesn't mean there are probably 20, just in my county, 'better' than me.

steve_swinehart · August 7, 2009

No one had taken this shot now at this time, today, in this light, or with this X set of equipment.

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None of that has anything to do with whether it's a cliche or not because none of it addresses personal intent and expession. You've only stated a catalog of equipment and conditions - and that doesn't make a photograph unique.

Norma Desmond · August 7, 2009

I've been realizing for quite a while now that I, and others I know and whose work I look at, utilize cliché as just another photographic tool in the toolbox. It's interesting to me that it may cause some viewers to throw the baby out with the bath water. I think, sometimes, there will still be something compelling that may get them to take a look. I don't think clichés always have to make self-referencing commentary to be well used. I think they are there for the picking. I'm still not quite sure about the line separating cliché from symbol, but having thought about it a little more, it actually may simply be the caché we're willing to give something familiar at any given time. Perhaps because symbols tend to be so idealized, I'm rebelling a little by being drawn to clichés right now. Maybe it brings me down to Earth. Who knows?

Anyone else see it or use it as a tool?

inoneeye · August 7, 2009

"Anyone else see it [cliche] or use it as a tool?" Yes, often. Cliched subject as in using dolls and marionettes. Cliched subject matter such as homelessness. And in an attempt to elicit specific emotions or responses from a viewer (i include myself as viewer).

I was once challenged to prove that i had the ability to engage this challenger with a nude that he did not consider a portrait. Of course there are many existing examples that one could use to combat this limited view of photography. I blatantly chose to create a venetian blind headless nude. I chose venetian blinds because i believed that there is a reason for it becoming a cliched. A good reason. And i thought that it would be a useful tool in this challenge. To date that photo elicits more response, positive and negative than any other i have done... Venetian blind photos are still one of my fallback cliches to challenge and gauge myself, (do i have a fresh vision to show?). If i do than i should be able to use it well enough to craft a cliche of interest. For that it has become a personal symbol.

"I'm still not quite sure about the line separating cliché from symbol, but having thought about it a little more, it actually may simply be the caché we're willing to give something familiar at any given time."

The line often is non existent because the symbol is a cliche and the cliche is the symbol. An American flag is a strong symbol for better or worse, it is also often used as cliche. Religious symbols are often used as cliche. Is the flag a cliche or is it only in how it is used as a tool for it's visual power, as a symbol. The flag is often presented almost in a vacuum, it has aesthetic value and cliche potential and symbolic power. Has the power of the symbol gone down for the flag or can it be rejuvenated by the right vision the one photographer who sees it in a fresh way.

Cliches can be very exciting and useful if crafted well. To do so requires first the recognition of the potential.

inoneeye · August 7, 2009

and btw cliche as product differs from cliche as tool. my headless venetian blind nude is both.

aplumpton · August 7, 2009

unless you are cliché-ing your own style

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"At that point isn't it a parody, which gets into a whole different area of expression?" (Steve)

Steve, I understand parody to be "the use of imitation to ridicule an author's (or other artist"s) style", not something like your friend who did "formula paintings" in which he simply replicated his own paintings. He was in fact cliché-ing his own approach or style, not parodying some other artist (as far as I know from what you said).

The snowgeese of my artist friend consists of very competent and individual creations, primarily expressionist and occasionally quite highly abstract in intent (no such thing as skies type X, or barns type Y), and each one unique in composition, balance and tonality, etc., with the common thread that of snowgeese in flight or displacing within a field. That input to style and content is consistent and can be either perceived as the author cliché-ing his well known earlier work, or simply evolving a style and approach (my feeling is that his work is evolving, but the cliché-ing aspect is not easily discounted. His images (which I hasten to add I do not sell - so much the worse for me!) are each interesting for different reasons and not usually acquired with room decoration matching in mind (which I can rattest to, as I have seen his work in several homes and public places the spaces of which are not always fully compatible with the colour or compositions of his paintings).

Norma Desmond · August 8, 2009

Josh, Thanks a lot for those concrete examples. It's just the kind of thing I had in mind. And I'm glad you drew a distinction between cliché as tool and as finished product. I did bring it up because I thought it had potential.

Norma Desmond · August 8, 2009

So, a philosopher friend of mine who likes to follow the forums but hasn't joined PN sent me an email because he was intrigued by this subject. I thought he had an interesting take. I asked his permission to submit this and he agreed. I'll post it and go to sleep and consider it more carefully tomorrow:

There where lots of interesting posts made already by several members but I'm gonna focus on your last sentence in your 7:26 post since the answer I wanted to give does expand a bit on it.

"I'm rebelling a little by being drawn to clichés right now. Maybe it brings me down to Earth. Who knows? Anyone else see it or use it as a tool?"

IMO, I think that clichés are inherent to life, Earth itself, and that being exposed to them and using them is inevitable, in photography, art, or otherwise. But there is a distinction to be made I think between small clichés and big clichés. Small clichés would be, in a photography context, something like the mentioned "milk droplet being frozen in a flash", not 'small' as in being anything less but because one can choose not to make such an image. The big clichés however are the consciousness of mankind since the dawn of ages and which one can't escape from: Love - Hate - Death - Life - Religion, all the big themes, all that makes us human ... In short, they are BIG clichés, not because they are more cliché than any other but because they are universal, more applicable to everything and anything that constitutes our consciousness in living life and they are interconnected AND compete with each other. I view it as life being the river, and the clichés being the uncontrollable debris being swept away with the current in each and every direction. If there is a tool to be used in context of clichés, any tool at all, I would think that it is a tool that absolutely wants to make sure that all the debris reaches open water (excuse me for the heavy metaphorical approach here, I don't know how else to put it into words.) and no longer clashes with one another but is being positively diluted into one big knowledge: The Truth, an endless search, so 'the tool' will have to have a similar lifespan. In a way, the clichés themselfes are the tool, they are what makes our search for truth tangible, if we use them as a tool, we're expressing our inherent desire for truth, for a destination to which they can finally arrive, for absolute meaning. In science, the classical Newtonian physics have become a 'cliché' in context of Quantum Mechanics. A cliché however that can't be broken, only bend a little towards its destination, towards its more encompassing truth. Clichés can hardly be broken (not the ones that matter) for if they are, the scientist is left with nothing but an empty void space, with nothing tangible left to reach a possible destination, with no formula at hand. Like the artist staring into a blank canvas, undecidedly and unwilling to risk the cliché...

aplumpton · August 8, 2009

"The big clichés however are the consciousness of mankind since the dawn of ages and which one can't escape from: Love - Hate - Death - Life - Religion, all the big themes, all that makes us human" (Philosopher friend of Fred)

I'm no philosopher, but I tend to look at these as being more the "attributes", "laws", "consequences" or "phenomena" of human behaviour, conduct and existance, rather than clichés, which I think are more the way in which such conduct is manifest.

Wars are a consequence of several of these attributes (love-hate-religion...) and have become what some might consider a cliché (a big one, of course). Wars are certainly repetitive, and perhaps a "too often used idea". That we stick with clichés is a problem of human conduct or behaviour, or an inertia. Photographing the half-dome to insensibility and from a similar viewpoint to Adams is a problem of photographic inertia. Art, at least, requires more than such a cliché to be original, to succeed.

Newtonian physics are really a truism that has been partially broken or questioned in some applications by newer knowledge (Quantum mechanics, for one). It's successful use now over more than five centuries was not regarded as a "too often used idea (cliché)" but rather as a building block for new applications (engineering) or as a basis for incremental pure science evolution (e.g., quantum mechanics).

Our use of measured time and distance, the basis of much of our accumulated knowledge and use of science, engineering, medecine, etc., could be considered a cliché, if you are willing to accept a huge part of everything realised and re-used by man as simply cliché.

I feel that by attributing too much of human behaviour or phenomena to the word cliché, we are deviating from one of its important and more limiting definitions.

In photographic and other applications, cliché is "a too often used idea"

You uses it, or you doesn't...!

aplumpton · August 8, 2009

"The big clichés however are the consciousness of mankind since the dawn of ages and which one can't escape from: Love - Hate - Death - Life - Religion, all the big themes, all that makes us human" (Philosopher friend of Fred)

I'm no philosopher, but I tend to look at these as being more the "attributes", "laws", "consequences" or "phenomena" of human behaviour, conduct and existance, rather than clichés, which I think are more the way in which such conduct is manifest.

Wars are a consequence of several of these attributes (love-hate-religion...) and have become what some might consider a cliché (a big one, of course). Wars are certainly repetitive, and perhaps a "too often used idea". That we stick with clichés is a problem of human conduct or behaviour, or an inertia. Photographing the half-dome to insensibility and from a similar viewpoint to Adams is a problem of photographic inertia. Art, at least, requires more than such a cliché to be original, to succeed.

Newtonian physics are really a truism that has been partially broken or questioned in some applications by newer knowledge (Quantum mechanics, for one). It's successful use now over more than five centuries was not regarded as a "too often used idea (cliché)" but rather as a building block for new applications (engineering) or as a basis for incremental pure science evolution (e.g., quantum mechanics).

Our use of measured time and distance, the basis of much of our accumulated knowledge and use of science, engineering, medecine, etc., could be considered a cliché, if you are willing to accept a huge part of everything realised and re-used by man as simply cliché.

I feel that by attributing too much of human behaviour or phenomena to the word cliché, we are deviating from one of its important and more limiting definitions.

In photographic and other applications, cliché is "a too often used idea"

You uses it, or you doesn't...!

aplumpton · August 8, 2009

"The big clichés however are the consciousness of mankind since the dawn of ages and which one can't escape from: Love - Hate - Death - Life - Religion, all the big themes, all that makes us human" (Philosopher friend of Fred)

I'm no philosopher, but I tend to look at these as being more the "attributes", "laws", "consequences" or "phenomena" of human behaviour, conduct and existance, rather than clichés, which I think are more the way in which such conduct is manifest.

Wars are a consequence of several of these attributes (love-hate-religion...) and have become what some might consider a cliché (a big one, of course). Wars are certainly repetitive, and perhaps a "too often used idea". That we stick with clichés is a problem of human conduct or behaviour, or an inertia. Photographing the half-dome to insensibility and from a similar viewpoint to Adams is a problem of photographic inertia. Art, at least, requires more than such a cliché to be original, to succeed.

Newtonian physics are really a truism that has been partially broken or questioned in some applications by newer knowledge (Quantum mechanics, for one). It's successful use now over more than five centuries was not regarded as a "too often used idea (cliché)" but rather as a building block for new applications (engineering) or as a basis for incremental pure science evolution (e.g., quantum mechanics).

Our use of measured time and distance, the basis of much of our accumulated knowledge and use of science, engineering, medecine, etc., could be considered a cliché, if you are willing to accept a huge part of everything realised and re-used by man as simply cliché.

I feel that by attributing too much of human behaviour or phenomena to the word cliché, we are deviating from one of its important and more limiting definitions.

In photographic and other applications, cliché is "a too often used idea"

You uses it, or you doesn't...!

aplumpton · August 8, 2009

My apologies for multiple insertions. The server said it wasn't responding to the submitting function, so I retried. Perhaps the moderator might cut the "cliché" submissions and leave just the original. Thanks. AP

Brad_ · August 8, 2009

I'm still perfecting my Matadors painted with day-glo paints on black velvet...

Norma Desmond · August 8, 2009

Brad's matadors are kitsch, not clichés, but it's interesting to consider the differences.

I also think there's a difference between a cliché and a copy. I think shooting Half Dome the way Adams did is copying him. It may have some of the same qualities as a cliché (boring, tiresome, overdone), but I think there are refinements here to better understand clichés.

"a saying, expression, idea, or element of an artistic work which has been overused to the point of losing its original meaning or effect, rendering it a stereotype . . . "

"a trite, stereotyped expression; a sentence or phrase, usually expressing a popular or common thought or idea, that has lost originality, ingenuity, and impact by long overuse"

I think it may be helpful to emphasize the expressive element of clichés. In photography, I don't think the significant aspect of "cliché" is suggested by copying someone else's work over and over again or shooting the same subject over and over again. That's repetition, sometimes stealing, lack of creativity, what have you.

I think it's more in the expression and response that clichés live. Shooting Half Dome is simply habit. So are many tourist-type photos. Misty mountaintops with dramatic skies are cliché. Because they're hackneyed expressions and they elicit predictable responses. The Venetian Blind is cliché not because it is what it is and has been photographed so often. It's cliché because it does what it does and means what it means (especially as a lighting tool). It has come to express something so familiar and, after a time, has become a superficial way of getting a response. It often doesn't seem to express anything new or elicit something individual or unique from either the photographer or the viewer.

And I think that's why I prefer not to run from clichés but to think of them significantly. Expressions and responses hit me in my photographic gut. If I can play with them, I'm usually happy and stimulated.

I like my friend's distinction between little and big clichés and think there's merit to that way of thinking. Maybe I'll discuss with him whether he was talking about Love and Hate themselves or the expression of them.

Arthur, if it were me, I'd say Love and Hate as so-called attributes of human existence are meaningless. They only have meaning through expression and manifestation. It's not as if Love is waiting there in the universe for me to give it form. My feeling it or manifesting it or expressing it IS what it is.

So I think expressions of Love, Hate, Religious Belief are often very much clichéd, they almost have to be. Perhaps here is where the cliché does meet the universal.

I love the way my friend ended his email:

" . . . the artist staring into a blank canvas, undecidedly and unwilling to risk the cliché . . . "

There's something to be learned from that.

Julie H · August 8, 2009

Fred,

I'm enjoying this discussion. I just wanted to add a bit, triggered by your friend's reference to big/small clichés.

I think clichés are a local/tribal thing in much the same way that teenage fashions are local/tribal. Why, when or how the various styles of shoes, haircuts, and what-not go in and out of fashion -- and the violent importance of knowing and observing what is in/out of fashion is very much like how cliches are treated in art.

There are clichés specific only to the USA; there are clichés specific only to photographers in the USA; there are clichés specific only to California photographers in the USA and so on down to your local circle of friends. I am not sure there are any worldwide clichés.

luis_g · August 8, 2009

A short rant on this topic. Been following it for days, trying to restrain myself from posting in this forum and subjecting myself to the seemingly inevitable outcome, but here goes:

[Disclaimer: I don't think there is anything wrong with creating cliche'd photographs. They have sustained countless numbers of photographers, MFAs too; delighted/informed viewers throughout history, and brought much satisfaction to people who consider and engage photography as a game. And there is nothing wrong with that.]

There are no cliche'd subjects, scenes, objects, light, equipment, spaces, interiors, old trains, planes, cars, boats, geezers, mountains, people, Love, Hate, Death, Life, Religion, etc . Even sea captains!

Only the cliche' minds of the legions approaching them the same (generic) way.

The snapshot style, used by many photographers, is a good example of utilizing a cliche' conceptually as a strategy, thereby deliberately subverting its original generic status into a venue for a specific one. Or Evan's open admission about using the documentary style as a decoy for what he really was doing (according to him).

Do I think of cliche's? Historically, yes. In terms of personal process, mostly ex post facto, specially when editing, as in the (cough) rare occassion when something like: "Oh GAWWWD, THAT is so fkng LAME" issues from the direction of my workdesk.

I see no sense in a mental toolkit or formulae for myself, since I believe it makes no difference, except to stultify and increase awkwardness/self-consciousness in the outcome.

To put it bluntly, the less individuated a human being is, as a human being/photographer, the more generic and cliche'd his work will be.

End Rant.

aplumpton · August 8, 2009

"I am not sure there are any worldwide clichés." (Julie)

Before you get to the worldwide scene, which is an amalgam of countless clichés, you need to consider some nearly 200 countries and an even greater number of individual cultures (for instance, speaking of cultures that have been of significant size in Canada for at least 200 years, there are approximately two dozen). They all have their regional/social/cultural/historique clichés, just as they all have their own definitive lifestyles.

The refreshing thing is that if you are looking from one culture (let's say, American) to another (let's say, Finnish or Estonian) you are confronted with clichés that are different, and therefore somewhat unknown and more palatable to the original thinking photographer or artist of the other culture, as they fit less into the dictionary definition of "a too often used idea."

If you get weighted down with clichés, I am convinced that you risk leaving less space and dynamics in your minds for individual (individuated?) actions.

colin carron · August 9, 2009

I think about them where I am aware of them and I take the cliche shot anyway just to get it out of my system. Then go for something more from my own response. Another way is to subvert the recognisable cliche by going for it then adding ones own comment . But that can be a bit twee and self conscious.

Norma Desmond · August 9, 2009

Julie, Thanks for bringing attention to the contextual aspect of clichés. Since there are contexts in which humans are the local things (we can widen the picture even beyond the USA), I'm not sure there wouldn't be certain cross-cultural clichés. Phylo, in another thread, posted a photo of a miniscule Earth as seen from space. Sometimes, that's how it is.

Luis, Thanks. I think the snapshot style you mention is a great example of the kind of thing some of us are talking about. Also, what you say about Love, Hate, etc. seems to jive well with what I said about them . . . that what's significant here is the expression of those things. Do you think of photographic tools as baggage? Though it didn't come across as one, why did you feel you were ranting? Was there something to rant about? Arthur, I agree that being weighed down by clichés or an exploration of them could be a problem. Exploring them as some of us have discussed, on the other hand, is liberating, a photographic and/or artistic challenge.

luis_g · August 9, 2009

[Fred] "Do you think of photographic tools as baggage?"

When I was an archer, (when I learned to shift a car manually, Swim, read, etc) every factoid got in the way until it became like breathing. Then, it just happened effortlessly and gracefully. For me, photographic tools were the same way. I'm not saying tool kits are bad per se, only that they haven't worked for me until they were integrated via practice.

[Fred] "Though it didn't come across as one, why did you feel you were ranting? Was there something to rant about?"

Nervousness. I was a little nervous, I'd promised myself to stay out of this forum, but the discussion drew me in. The old approach-avoid conundrum.

Norma Desmond · August 10, 2009

"Then, it just happened effortlessly and gracefully." --Luis

Nicely said.

There's sometimes a tension in this forum between the taking/making of photographs and a discussion of the creative process. I wasn't sure where you were coming from re tools . . . "I see no sense in a mental toolkit or formulae for myself." Philosophy of Photography is about ideas, challenges, processes. I am not creating photos right here. Having ideas, challenges, considering process here doesn't inhibit me from being effortless and graceful when I am making photos. (Some photographers may be more intense and intentional rather than effortless even when clicking the shutter.)

For me, making photographs isn't comparable to shifting a car in that respect. Once I learned how to shift -- I concentrated a lot on the San Francisco hills -- I had it down and don't think much more about it. Creating photographs, for me, is a continual learning process . . . maturation, growth, new challenges . . . a reason I come here. I think there'll always be room for considering tools and how they relate to and help achieve my vision.

cooltpmd · August 10, 2009

Fred;

I have more of an issue with novelty than cliche'.

Honestly, if you take a picture of the Golden Gate Bridge ... which is a magnificant structure, worthy of attention ... 999/1000 it will be a cliche' ... but it's yours. If it makes you happy, makes you money, or simply preserves a memory it is a grand success.

Too often, there is a sense that novel=artist. So, you go to the Golden Gate Bridge ... take a Macro of a bolt on the bridge ... and while you have met the definition of an "artist", you have taken an unidentifiable, unsellable, unemotional, and unmemorable photo.

Novel can often be good (or at least interesting), but novel for novel's sake is just pretenscious. I say take the photo that moves you ... and let the chips fall where they may.

luis_g · August 10, 2009

"Creating photographs, for me, is a continual learning process . . . maturation, growth, new challenges . . . a reason I come here. I think there'll always be room for considering tools and how they relate to and help achieve my vision." --- Fred G.

Fred, I agree, and think Philosophy of Photography is about all those things (and more), and it is also why I come here.

As we see here often, not everyone approaches it in the same way. Why do you think there's "sometimes a tension in this forum between the taking/making of photographs and a discussion of the creative process"? And it's not just me, either. Is it a deficiency? I don't think so, only different ways of working, thinking, growing, maturing, etc. Each of us can learn quite a bit here from each other's philosophies. I addressed your original question, and I'm in on the discussions in my own way. Surely you noticed that I pointedly qualified what I said as my own, personal process, not a universal one.

I did not mean the bit about learning to drive a stick literally as a one-time, point-correspondent linear analogue to the creative process. In photography and the arts, as in life, we are always learning to shift, so the process I spoke of as integration, and you seem to agree with, is not a one-time-thing, but an ongoing one.

I remember Hiro, back when he shared the studio with Avedon, saying at a lecture that he chose focal lengths purely on an emotional basis -- and this was for ad work (!). The creative process isn't always logical, rational, linear and/or particularly lucid. The Philosophy of Photography, as I see it, encompasses this too.

While we can talk about the creative process, we're not talking about one monolithic thing any more than we are talking about the outcome.

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