civilized ku # 946 ~ as different as night and day
Friday, May 6, 2011 at 09:56AM 
Night and day ~ Albany, NY • click to embiggenRegarding the ongoing cliche, derivative, originality discussion, John Linn wrote:
I found the OpEd: 10 Oeuvres Aspiring Photographers Should Ignore article depressing... too much about what NOT to do. Give me a break, I'll do what I want.
Maybe I'm wrong, but I found the article humorous and somewhat tongue-in-cheek-ish. IMO, the authors were serious but only up to a point. And that point was simply that, for picture makers, there is a tendency to follow the herd albeit in many cases with an attempt to add one's own personal touches to the process. Although, I can understand why the true-to-the-original copy-the-leaders (not a reference to John Linn) crowd might be upset with the article.
In any event, unless a picture (or body of work) is just an uninspired rehash of one that has come before it, I don't get all that worked up about it. I just keep on moving to the next picture(s).
IMO, John Szarkowski said it best (and, FYI, I agree):
I am afraid that you have misunderstood my views. I am not especially interested in anonymous photography, or pictorialist photography, or avant-garde photography, or in straight, crooked or any other subspecific category of photography; I am interested in the entire, indivisible, hairy beast—because in the real world, where photographs are made, these subspecies, or races, interbreed shamelessly and continually.
Reader Comments (2)
I agree with Mark: I also "found the article humorous and somewhat tongue-in-cheek-ish".
One point that came to mind when I read it was being "photographically aware" to be able to de-construct an image (yours or some-one elses). It's important to know what you like, dislike and why.
On this basis, there's no harm copying some-one as an *exercise* to improve your skills / clarify your thinking. Then you take your learnings and go to your next project.
Yes, definitely tongue-in-cheek. When we start to take ourselves too seriously as photographers - or anything else, for that matter - we're in deep doo-doo.
Love the Szarkowski quote. Especially the "interbreeding" part.