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THE FOLLOWING IS GLEANED FROM the blog, Photos and Stuff….
A great deal of photography is done by people whose main goal to to make photographs that their peers will approve of. That is, they seek to make photographs that comply with the more-or-less arbitrary standards a group of photographers has invented for themselves….[they] are making photographs intended to be liked by other photographers, and you're doing that by adhering to essentially arbitrary criteria your community has invented for itself….Nobody wants any of this stuff except the people in that very small community.
iMo, the author has stated the obvious-a great of photography is made by people adhering to the approved constructs (tropes / rubics, if you will) of various photo genre (straight, street, landscape, still life, cute cats, et al)-but, I believe he arrives at an inaccurate generalization, i.e. nobody wants any of this stuff except the people in that very small community.
While it is true that many of those who admire work created in the style of a specific genre are practitioners of the same style of picture making, there is no dearth of those-gallery / art museum goers-who enjoy viewing photographs (regardless of genre) who are not picture makers of any kind (other than casual, at best) nor are they privy to or give a thinker’s cuss about the rules and regulations of any particular genre. Hell, some of them even buy photographs to hang on their walls or include in their collections.
That written, the words of Bruce Davidson come to mind…
I am not interested in showing my work to photographers any more, but to people outside the photo-clique.
…which might be applicable to the author’s ultimate conclusion that-I’m paraphrasing here-when any genre’s devoted cadre views photographs made by a fellow practitioner, most (generalization alert) tend to judge its “goodness” by how much it conforms to that genre’s “rules”. Which results in…
The essential action of the photograph, its ability to testify to that-which-was, gets lost here somewhere. The essential action of the artist, which surely involves complying with the demands of an inner voice in opposition to the voice of the community, gets lost here somewhere.
To which I write, D’accord!.
FYI, although I can and have organized some of my photography into recognized genre bodies of work, that is all done after the fact-that of pursuing the making of photographs according to the dictates of my specific genre, i.e. discursive promiscuity*. Under dictates of which I photograph, specific genre be damned, any thing / every thing** which pricks my eye and sensibilities.
A propensity which conspires to make me, plain and simple, just a photographer.
*I made up that name.
**see pictures in this entry, just a sample of which I made over the past few days.