Cliché
The Online Photographer has recently had an interesting discussion on clichés:
The Worst Clichés
So I’ve got a question for you. What would you say are the worst subject-matter clichés in photography? I’m trying to come up with a list.
via The Online Photographer: The Worst Clichés.
This is a subject that is close to my heart. I’ve often thought that my photographs, while not too bad technically, leave a lot to be desired in terms of overall interest. You probably wouldn’t look twice at my pictures. A fairly well-known photographer who was very kind to me (he spent time with me and gave me useful advice) once told me that I had a good eye, but that I relied too much on “photographic clichés”. What I failed to clarify at the time was whether he meant “cliché subjects” or clichés in terms of slavishly following photographic “rules” (e.g. sticking to rule of thirds; not tilting the camera etc.). Maybe even both.
The above posts tend to focus on “cliché subjects” so let’s go with that. I’m starting to be of the opinion that since the advent of cell phones everything has been photographed as nauseam and effectively just about everything is now a cliché. So the word cliché has very little meaning – in terms of photographic subjects at least. So it’s not so much what you photograph as how well you photograph it. There are great photos; good photos; mediocre photos (almost all of mine fall into this category); and bad photos. You can very easily take a bad photo of a non-clichéd subject. It’s not as easy to take a good picture of a clichéd subject.
So I’ll continue to take pictures of dogs, flowers, sunsets and all the other subjects on the list mentioned in the OP articles. Partly because I like many of these subjects and I’ll take pictures of anything that catches my attention – and partly because if I paid any attention to this list I’d never photograph anything: “Oh that looks interesting – Oops! Can’t take the picture because it’s a flower”. “How about that one? Oh no! Taboo – it’s a dog”. “What a gorgeous sunset. Pity it’s a cliché”. I wonder if anyone ever said to Michelangelo: “You know Mike, I’m really not sure about that Madonna. You know Madonna’s have been done to death right? You don’t want to be seen as focusing too much on clichés do you” (not that I’m trying to compare myself with Michelangelo).
I’ll keep photographing whatever takes my fancy. Who knows I might come up with something unique and interesting one day.
Maybe a good definition of cliché in this context would be “All photographs are “clichéd” unless taken by Henri Cartier-Bresson (insert your favorite photographer here) in which case they’re not.”
