I send an intermittent newsletter to people on my mailing list. I mostly talk about art, photography and the creative process, but I also share news, information about exhibitions, and the occasional special offer. I try to make my emails interesting enough for people to reply and start a conversation.
Here's a recent example:
Over the holiday I have been re-reading Peter Henry Emerson's Naturalistic Photography for Students of the Art, and this caused me to think about my own photographs.
Emerson wrote about two hypothetical photographers making a picture of the same tree. One of them will try to get every leaf on every branch sharply in focus. The other will concentrate on showing the wind moving through the leaves, content to leave impressionistic smudges rather than recognisable details. Both are valid interpretations, but is one better than the other? Emerson certainly thought so, but I'm not so sure. To declare that one is better than the other requires a shared definition of "better". (Emerson was happy to provide his definition, of course, but later he renounced it, so I won't repeat it here.)
Presumably one of these hypothetical photographs will appeal to more people than the other, but does that make it better? Not really: it just shows that one is more popular. However, popularity is as much a function of how many people get to see the photograph as it is a function of its inherent appeal, so for me it is not the right way to measure the worth of a photograph. For that we must look a bit deeper.
Here are some criteria that make sense to me.
Number One: Did the photograph achieve the photographer's aim when making it? Most photos are made for a reason. Did this one deliver?
I'm not necessarily talking about technical perfection, here. Many perfectly focused, perfectly exposed and perfectly processed photos fail to meet their objective (what Ansel Adams called, "A sharp image of a fuzzy concept").
Mimi, December 2024. Platinum print from an 8x10 in-camera negative on textured Rives BFK paper. My aim when making this portrait was to capture my daughter's character at this formative age. From that perspective, I think this photo was a success.
Number Two: Does the photograph reveal something that was previously unknown? This is more tricky, because it depends entirely on the viewer and how they see the world.
Two Pears. Platinum print from an 8x10 in-camera negative on Arches Platine. This is a deeply significant photograph for me, because it showed me that a still life could be about much more than the objects in front of the camera.
Number Three: Does someone treasure the photograph? This could be the photographer themselves, another person or lots of other people.
Here I'm talking about something deeper than social media likes. The photographs I treasure include my children, my wife, some of my nudes that have a particular significance to me, some of my still lifes, and some of the many prints I have collected over the years.
Alexa, June 2022. Sepia toned silver gelatine print on fibre-based paper. I made this on a new (to me) Arax 6x6 camera. I didn't quite get the focus right, but that doesn't matter to me.
Number Four: Is someone willing to buy it? From one perspective, this tells us nothing about the value of a photograph, but from another it tells us everything. The truth is subjective and likely somewhere between these two extremes.
Which of these criteria are the most important? It depends upon your perspective, of course.
For an astrophysicist, a technically precise photo that reveals the chemical signature of a far away star may be most valuable.
For an actor, perhaps a stylish headshot that helps them to stand out from the crowd and get more work is the one.
For me, the most important criteria are: (1) does the photograph look beautiful to me; (2) does it reveal a truth that I didn't know before; and (3) does it bring someone joy. These are how I measure my own work, and also the prints in my collection.
What about you? What makes a photograph important to you?
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