I babbled thusly -- >>>There are no cliche'd subjects, only cliche' approaches to them. <<<< Gregory queried --- *Do you still find joy in yet another sunset or nude? Not in "yet another" ones, but in fresh, personal approaches to them, and in witnessing people growing through the medium. There is nothing new subject-wise. Every year more photographs are made than all the bricks ever created by man. What makes a photo a stand-out ? That a landscape was taken on the moon ? Yawn. Once the novelty of the exotic wears off (the brief "wow"), you realize that it may be an historical image, but a yawner as a landscape photograph. It's not the subject, but what you do with it. Look at what Weston did with peppers, a toilet, rocks on Point Lobos....Bullock with a naked child in a forest.....nudes in old cabins....Eggleston with parked cars....Walker Evans with peeling posters....Ernst Haas with snow.....E.J. Bellocq with prostitutes....Alice Austen with vegetable vendors....Martin Munkacsi with a running model on a beach on a cold day....Diane Arbus with a young Republican....ROy DeCarava with a delivery man taking a minute's nap.....Helen Levitt with children in summertime....Jan Groover with dishes in her sink...Bill Brandt with his nudes....Les Krims with is mom....Ralph Eugene MEatyard with two masks and a giggle of friends and relatives....Sally Mann and her kids....Minor White with sun streaming through a window in the afternoon....Paul Strand with a fork and a bowl...HCBresson with a man jumping a puddle....Ken Josephson with a postcard....etc., etc., etc. I can go on forever, but you get the point....it's not the subject that is cliche'...it's YOU, the photographer....it's always been what you could see of the world around -- and inside -- you. The only thing between you and great images is you and your imagination. Not what is around you, or what you shoot with. The finest images ever made were of such common, everyday, accessible subjects.....they are spread out all around us, calling us, but we do not hear them. Listen.... --- Luis
