Stay away from postcard photos!
Annebella Pollen's article (Lecturer in History of Art and Design at the University of Brighton) is entitled "When is a cliché not a cliché? Reconsidering Mass-Produced Sunsets". (accessed on 25/5/2021)
Starting from the fact that sunsets (as well as monuments and flags) are among the most inflated subjects of photography, she states "....Sunset photographs, however, are a different matter: they have come to represent the most predictable, culturally devalued and banal of image-making practices. Critics dismiss them as 'chocolate box' or 'picture postcard'; they are seen as clichés ".
It is not easy to argue against this thesis, since, as I wrote before, the production of this type of content and subjects has grown dramatically in recent years.
The advent of digital photography has broken through some barriers, including the myth that to access the practice of photography you need great economic resources. In fact, since the resolution available in digital photographs (in the first cameras it was about 1 megapixel) broke through the 5-megapixel barrier, all other barriers have fallen as if by a domino effect.
Another decisive incentive for the massification of photography was the advent of mobile phones, and today we can say that "we are all photographers".
The production of digital images has never been higher in absolute value and per capita, and, as they say, "today is more than yesterday and it will be less than tomorrow".
The social-mental process of us humans leads us to memorize everything for the need to remember, document, represent, communicate, and this natural need is now facilitated by the ease of accessing these needs at any economic level.
So, as Pollen provocatively states, the need arises to distinguish what is cliche (already seen, common) from what is not, what is a repetitive and simple product of bits and what is work of art and professional work, almost as if the world of professional photographers had the pressing need to stand out from the mass of photographers, that is, all the others.
"...photography has tainted what it sought
to cherish through overuse...."
(Annebella Pollen, When is a cliché not a cliché? Reconsidering Mass-Produced Sunsets)
The rest of the article is based on statements, even contemptuous, by other authors, such as Susan Sontag, Julian Stallabrass, Robert Castell and Dominique Schnapper’s to reinforce the common thought of the professional and artistic photographic world that an inflated beauty loses all its charm and artistic content.
"All of those quoted above share attitudes with the many cultural critics long before them who have posited sober and minimalist taste as a sign of ‘advanced’ cultural superiority."
(Annebella Pollen, When is a cliché not a cliché? Reconsidering Mass-Produced Sunsets)
All these very firm standpoints remind me, by similarity, of some of the currents of thought of the period shortly after the birth of photography, when it was stated that photography was "too perfect" and that, to approach the art of painting and almost to be worthy of it, it had to be made imperfect by conscious errors and signs of imperfection.
As once the creation of the defect was sought, today we should try to represent not what is beautiful, but what is peculiar, improbable, almost ugly by definition.
Thus currents of thought arise that pursue minimalism not as an aesthetic taste, but because, as Adolf Loss affirms, every ornament is a crime.
I can't consider myself and I don't think I'm an artist. As a neutral thinker, therefore, I have the feeling that there is, on the part of many artists, a frantic search for the "different" to which to attach the adjective of art.
It seems to me that this search for the different, in a world where so much has already been seen and experienced, has become increasingly difficult, and that, therefore, there is a risk of defining the cliché with a tautological exercise for its own sake, where cliché it is that which is no different and which is therefore cliché.
As emerges from the Pollen article, the predisposition for a cliché image, and in particular for the image of a sunset, is strongly linked to the cultural depth of those who create it and those who appreciate it.
This thesis may seem snobbish and contemptuous towards those who, not being culturally educated, seem not even educated from an aesthetic point of view.
However, this thesis is supported by facts and numbers, and the example given by amateur photo contests confirms it.
From another point of view, the very fact of taking a picture of reality determines its uniqueness, consisting of the triad "I, here, now", and this uniqueness does play a primary role in the personal sphere of those who created it.
I am therefore led to wonder if the definition of cliché makes sense when the image is distributed and compared/ standardized with others, and therefore loses its uniqueness.
".the world is supped full with photos of children blowing out the candles on their birthday cakes. You know it. I know it. And yet, the world is not suffering from a surfeit of photographs of your child blowing out the candles on his birthday cake on his third birthday."
(Paul Butzi, Photo Blogger)
"Even stereotypes and clichés carry complexities and nuances. Just like sunsets, then, every sunset photograph is different. "
(Annebella Pollen, When is a cliché not a cliché? Reconsidering Mass-Produced Sunsets)