This is not a photo essay. There’s only the one picture, and the essay isn't really about that picture anyway. It’s about all pictures.
My Manifesto:
- Photographs are more interesting than photography.
- The most interesting property a photograph can have is ambiguity.
Before I say more about that, here’s a sports anecdote. I used to play golf (happily, I was cured). Every year we had a Four Clubs Challenge, in which you played 18 holes with just four clubs of your choice instead of the customary fourteen. Two things happened. First, about half the field shot their best score of the year. Second, everyone had so much fun, and produced such inventive and satisfying golf, that the talk afterwards was always, “We should do this more often!” But we never did. Next week we’d all be dragging around our huge bags filled with the maximum number of the latest and most expensive clubs, and playing the same dismal, unimaginative golf-by-the-numbers.
OK, I told you that in order to tell you this: it’s the same with photography. The more gear you have, and the better your gear is, the less likely you are to produce inventive, satisfying and interesting photographs.
Want proof? Read any of the online photography gear discussion forums (the ones where people refer to lenses as "glass" and to buying new equipment as "pulling the trigger"). Then look at the work of those apparent experts, especially the glass trigger pullers: it’s boring, formulaic rubbish. There’s an inverse relationship between obsession with equipment and the IQ (interest quotient) of photographs produced.
So what’s all this got to do with ambiguity? Look at the work of really great current photographers. Let’s consider some contemporary Magnum photographers as an unimpeachable standard: Parke, D’Agata, Parr, Pellegrin. They’re quite different photographers, but the one quality their photographs have in common is ambiguity. It’s very often not immediately clear what the photograph means, nor sometimes even what the subject of the photograph really is. You cannot absorb the work of these modern masters at a glance. It’s uncertain and unsettling, not reassuring. It grapples with you; it very nearly mugs you from the inside out, if you have any imagination at all.
And yet none of these four people I’ve cited would be highly rated by DPC’s predominantly enthusiast photographers, because these four are all about the photograph, rather than the photography. You could give them any piece of shit camera and they'd still produce thrilling, interesting photographs.
The reason I make these observations is not to be scornful of enthusiast photographers. OK, it is a wee bit, but it's not just that. It’s a challenge, like the Four Clubs golf tournament. Take some pictures with a crappy camera. Take pictures in unhelpful light, at an unpromising location. Don’t carry a bag. For that day don't be a photographer, instead let a photograph - just one interesting, unplanned and ambiguous photograph - find you. Which it will.
Tomorrow you can go back to hauling the big bag with the full set of Titleist or Callaway glass. But I’ll bet you will remember your Four Cubs Challenge score with delight and wonder. And there’s about a 50% chance you’ll have shot your most interesting photograph of the year.
