The advent of the snapshot is not a serious enterprise. I believe the camera does the work. There is no genius in photography. Unless… you serve a higher purpose than documentation, you are a snapper.
A snap shot by definition is a movement in itself whether it is an uncontrived and genuine attempt to document an environment, person, event or time. So a snap shot aesthetic where you take a vernacular style and contrive it so as to play dumb to actual composition or arrangements is also at a push a snap shot to. An again you rely heavily on the medium or photography to do the hard work for you. And your only comment it a visual pun quite literally.
My belief is that variables make a photographer. To me a photographer is a person who can control variables with a camera. A static documentation of their own mais en scene. In time I have warmed to the idea of documentary photography and its aesthetic, in found vernacular photography and more highly regarded snapshot aesthetic photography and I was bought round by the advances of particular documentary photographers with a certain eye. It draws my attention to how one photographer can take an entirely different photograph to what I can take at the same time. But…they are but laws of variables. Variables such as personal experience and height. Rendering the difference a question of probability. By which I mean there are only so many ways to document the ready made. So in that light there is a chance that anyone is capable of taking a similar if not the same image as anyone else. The day is regardless the physical will only be the printed image. This illuminates the philosophical argument of it being a different image because it was a separate click of a shutter. The end result will look similar and there for lack originality.
So if all this is hypothetically true how does one differentiate themselves?
I suggest the control of factors and variables is the answer and to route to originality. So how do you manipulate variables? It is obvious really, by manipulation, darkrooms, additional lighting, making a set, casting a model, making the costume, etc. the quicker answer is untold fiction. Create a story a spin on an original or a new one. Vernacular energy alone can not serve as a form of originality it can only be considered documentary or journalistic. Documentary photography has its place in art I admit, but other than being an embodiment of creation it is not in itself creativity it is only functionality. Creativity is found in the unfathomable daily routine understandable but radical in ideals.
If you think I am being too general, shoot me, but make it original.
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