The urge to make clichés stems from a desire to make pictures that look like everybody else's pictures. Why would anybody want to do this? Personally I think it's because it relieves us from having to rely only on our own judgment when evaluating what we've done. Photographers, far more than other kinds of artists, are perpetually insecure about whether what they've done is going to be accepted as good. I also think photographers like clichés because, at an early stage of our development, it's a way of demonstrating competence and accomplishment. You can tell you're in this stage because the phrases "that looks like a professional took it!" and "it looks like a postcard!" are construed as compliments, and make us swell up with pride. (Later, of course, those kinds of comments become insults.)
So what's a photographic cliché? As with pornography, you're supposed to know it when you see it. I suppose we might define it as "conventional subjects shown in a conventional way." That this leaves each of us to define "conventional" for ourselves is probably a good thing.
Conventions, of course, change. In the style known as "pictorialism"—largely defined through the journal Camera Work by Alfred Stieglitz, who later grew bored by it—it was conventional, for some reason I never understood, to include a large glass globe in many pictures (guild secret? Masonic talisman? Esoteric symbology? Beats me). During the Eisenhower years, it was conventional that pictures be robust, cheerful, forward-looking, even heroic (which fortunately didn't hamper the ebullient Eisie, one of the great photographers of those days). Lately, convention can be found on tony art-gallery walls, where "photographers" no other photographers have heard of display fey, fatuous, flat, fuzzy, foreboding photos of nothing, interchangeably.
If you're smiling at that, don't get cocky. Amateurs are even worse. What informs the taste of amateurs who pursue clichés is their idea of the taste of others. Not the actual taste of others, mind you, but just the photographer's best attempts at second-guessing.
Be confident, baby
That's no way to live. As with many things, photography is often about self-confidence. The point is not so much to learn what other people like—that's ultimately a fool's errand—but to learn what you like. Only by identifying your own concerns and becoming comfortable with your own taste will you stand a chance of developing an organic style, or signature, or way of seeing, that is neither imitative ("designed to be like something else, but usually inferior to the original") or derivative.
Photo by Lee Friedlander
I think this is why rebellious and nonconformist teenagers often make the best photography students. They don't want to conform. They don't work to please.
We each are stuck with using our own taste as the foundation for what's good or bad, because the taste of others is so varied and unpredictable. If I found one person who loved one particular picture of yours and and gushed about it on and on, praising it to the skies, and another person who hated it and pronounced it worthless, what would that teach you? If you learn your own taste and cultivate self-confidence, you can be secure in the face of either reaction.
When you know with a quiet but solid confidence that you truly like one of your pictures and you're not shaken in the least when someone says, "What the hell is the point of that?" or "I hate that!," you're there.
Go for it. Dare to be different; be yourself. Eschew cliché.
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A version of this post was first published in 2003! (Jeez. Time flies.) I found it when I was poking around in the archives for the previous post. In the meantime, I found this. It's a page from a 1937 issue of U.S. Camera. Pretty funny that it starts with the same mysterious glass globes I mentioned. Notice which of M.F. Agha's clichés are no longer popular or would be politically incorrect today.
Wikipedia says Dr. Mehemed Fehmy Agha was a "Russian-born Turkish designer, art director, and pioneer of modern American publishing" who was "instrumental in...delivering the full force of European avant garde experimentation to the pages of Vogue, Vanity Fair, and House & Garden, the Condé Nast publishing company's flagship magazines in the United States."
Mike
Book o' the Week
The Atlas of Beauty: Women of the World in 500 Portraits. "Since 2013 photographer Mihaela Noroc has traveled the world with her backpack and camera taking photos of everyday women to showcase the diversity of beauty all around us. The Atlas of Beauty is a collection of her photographs celebrating women from all corners of the world, revealing that beauty is everywhere, and that it comes in many different sizes and colors."
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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:
Roger Bradbury: "Typical subjects at the first camera club I joined, over 40 years ago: 1.) Windmills. 2.) Sunsets. 3.) Swans. 4.) Any combination of the above. So when I entered an almost abstract photo of a top corner of my bedroom, with two different coloured walls, the top of a coloured door and frame and a white triangle of ceiling, I was laughed at. I grew disillusioned with the club from that point. At least I'd tried something different. But I do remember it. Not that I'm still holding a grudge or anything.... :-) "
Kenneth Tanaka: "I agree with your general suggestion to strive to make distinctive images. But I’d prefer to place emphasis on what to do, rather than to avoid clichés (which have a habit of changing over time anyway).
"Re 'The urge to make clichés stems from a desire to make pictures that look like everybody else's pictures.' No, I don’t agree. Or at least I don’t feel that the sentence accurately covers the observation. Photography is fundamentally a craft. Technology has automated most of its ickiest aspects, but it still requires learnin’. 'Making pictures that look like' pictures that you admire is a landmark in that process for many, perhaps most, people. So I’d encourage newbies to make many such pictures and study them, whether the person is 17 or 75. Once you’re able to intentionally make that trite image of the Grand Canyon, the Eiffel Tower, or the Brooklyn Bridge you’ve achieved competence with the gadget. Now for the fun part.
"Which leads to understanding why people make photos at all. Generally not for art. Not for recognition. And generally not for compensation. They make pictures to commemorate and, increasingly, to communicate. So as soon as someone mastered the basics or controlling their camera I would encourage them to concentrate of using it to communicate. Don’t be self-conscious about being cliché. Forget silly amateur photo 'composition' rules (that weren’t made for photography or art or the 20th or 21st centuries at all). Pay attention to what you’re putting in that frame, and where you’re putting it. Everything in the frame matters. Forget 'pretty.' Does it communicate what you want to say or depict? Does it record what you want to remember in, say, years to come? That’s the main purpose for using a camera for most of us.
"If some of your photos turn out to look very similar to many others you’ve seen…so what? As long as you created the image purposefully, who really gives a damn?"
Mike replies: I like your comments, as usual, and would only suggest that our differences hinge on one thing: you're considering "eschew cliché" as it represents a restriction, a limitation, a rule that one has to abide by; whereas, when I wrote that piece, I considered it might be a liberation, which might be freeing for some people. It's been my observation that people really do have a tendency to restrict their picture-taking to subjects that they've already seen as pictures by others.
Brian Cormack: "When I was in high school back in the 1990s, the school had a literary magazine that also included photography. My junior year I submitted a few pictures taken around town, including a few at the biggest tourist attraction here (called 'The Old Mill'). I joined the staff of the literary magazine my senior year and was surprised to see that the advisor adamantly refused to ever print any pictures of The Old Mill, since they received so many submissions of it every year. They even had a wall of photos in the office filled with all the pictures of the Mill that had been submitted over the years. I looked closely and found the one I had submitted the year before. I think about that every time I go out to that Mill to take pictures. It is a photogenic little spot, at least!"
Mike replies: That's great. The editor might have suggested an "Old Mill Issue," jam-packed with nothing but pictures of the Old Mill. Just as a joke. She could have included an open invitation to submit more pictures of the Old Mill for the next Old Mill Issue, which would be announced as being definitely scheduled for, say, a date 30 years in the future. :-)
My predecessor at the magazine I edited hated pictures of kids, and refused to print pictures of children unless he couldn't help it.
