Mitch Alland
Offline
• • •
Upload & Sell: Off
|
 p.4 #13 · The opposite of "meaningless street photography"... | |
panos.v wrote:
...What this discussion though is proving is that beauty is in the eye of the beholder and trying to make some ivory tower argument about meaning vs meaningless photography etc is pointless. Meaning, just like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.
...the premise of this thread is that somehow there is meaningless vs meaningful photography and that somehow there is a gold standard. Is that not a negative vibe in itself? And somehow that gold standard is displayed by the photos posted here...
Now you're being disingenuous again. In p.3 #13 you wrote: "Meaningful" is something very subjective to the person seeing the photo. As such, for the photographer making the photo, all they are doing is getting something meaningful to them and hoping enough will find meaning in it. — (though the underlined portion shows how you manage to put a negative spin on this as well).
As for the "gold standard" you posit, more disingenuousness as I never wrote, or even implied, that. In fact, I wrote the opposite. I quoted what E.H. Gombrich wrote in the introduction to his Story of Art: , "There really is no such thing as Art. There are only artists." I wrote that this places the artist, with his or her individual intentions and skills, as the central focus of artistic creation. I think the same thing goes for meaning (and meaninglessness) in photography. That is say, the important thing is the meaning and intent of the photographer. Then, that which is "curated" becomes a part of the art world.
panos.v wrote:
...You say the tire marks are because there's some tourist hotel at the end of the beach. That places some context to the photo. I still cannot see the hotel given the high contrast/framing (or maybe it is not even visible?) but that changes what people make of it. I'll take this one step furthere here (and maybe I am wrong): some photos are evocative on their own. Others need context. One doesn't make the other invalid or wrong. Maybe this series needs some context to help the viewer understand what they are looking at, given that the stylistic choices (of exposure, framing, contrast, camera shake, black and white, etc) sometimes obscure the scene.
...Show more →
At the time the I took the photo, the hotel was not visible from the beach unless one went just in front of it (where the bay bends to the left in the picture); but, then, the tire tracks would not be visible because the sea was at high tide and you'd be standing in water up to your ankles In any case, the series has the following sequence the "BUY, SELL, RENT PROPERTY photo" (encouraging development), the "electric wires" photo (the result of development) and, then, the "beach with time tracks photo", which can be sufficiently understood without having to write, "look at the tire tracks." But certainly not by people who want to make obnoxious statements.
Hua Hin
Chiang Mai
Sam Roi Yod
Edited on Oct 05, 2025 at 08:12 AM · View previous versions
|
