Newsgroup: it.arti.fotografia.segnalazioni
Titolo: Leggete  è molto interessante per le "Fotografie Noiose"

Leggete è molto interessante
http://194.100.88.243/petteri/pont/Pontification/o_Boring_Photographs/a_Boring_Photographs.html
Boring Photographs
One of the funniest photography-related books I've come across in the past 
few years is a very small, brown, plain-looking volume from Phaidon. It's 
called "Boring Postcards." Somehow, I think the German title, "Langweilige 
Postkarten" is even more evocative. It's a collection of meticulously 
grouped, carefully reproduced... boring postcards. Yet the parade of gas 
stations, diners, shopping malls, motorways, airports, and other extremely 
un-photogenic subjects often photographed without even a modicum of 
ambition, when presented as a collection, is incredibly funny. However, most 
boring photographs wouldn't make much of a book, even if put together like 
this. They're simply too boring. So boring that even a heavy coating of 
ironic publishing work wouldn't give enough context to make them 
interesting.
Anatomy of a Boring Photograph
Boring photographs aren't what you might first think. Album photos aren't 
boring. On the contrary, they're among the most interesting photographs to 
look at, especially if the album belongs to you or someone you know. There's 
nothing quite like turning the pages of an album, as the pictures get 
yellower and more faded with each visit. A photo album is memory condensed: 
like the quipu of the Incas, only explicit if the human memory is present to 
fill in the blanks, but mysteriously evocative even if it isn't. I would far 
sooner page through anyone's family album than go to an exhibition full of 
pretentious, large... boring photographs. Photography straddles the divide 
between art and utility. Most photographs are strictly utilitarian --  
whoever produced the image had some pretty specific purpose in mind when 
shooting it, whether it was to preserve a memory, to document a news story, 
or to sell toothpaste. These kinds of photographs are rarely really boring. 
They can't afford to be, or they wouldn't serve their purpose. Boring 
photography thrives in the realm of so-called "fine art" photography -- that 
is, photography whose primary reason for being is existence as an object in 
itself. "Dinge an sich," as the folks who gave us Langweilige Postkarten 
would helpfully add.  Something horrible tends to happen to people when they 
suddenly realize that the camera they hold can produce things that are 
pretty in and of themselves. They suddenly stop making interesting 
pictures -- the pictures that fill their albums, tell stories, evoke 
emotions, preserve memories. They go into a rictus of squeezing out endless 
flower macros and portraits of ducks. Eventually, as they progress in what 
they think of the art of photography, they may graduate to gauzy soft-focus 
portraits of simpering women (clothing optional), black-and-white figure 
studies of carefully sanitized, moodily lit nudes with perfect bodies on a 
black backdrop, eagles taking wing in zoos or wildlife sanctuaries, 
motorbikes speeding through the curves on a track, "golden hour" landscapes 
with mountains and water, or macros of bugs. Eventually some of them may 
realize the futility of it all and go into a rebellious mode and shoot off 
an angry series of poorly exposed grainy and blurry pictures of nothing in 
particular, or dress the simpering ladies in vinyl and slather lots of 
make-up on them and call it "fetish photography." Log on to Photosig and 
you're guaranteed to see a ton of these pictures on both the "Featured 
Photos" and "Photos" page. And, of course, open up any DPReview forum, and 
it's virtually certain that there'll be at least one thread with flower 
macros on the first page. Bubble gum for the eyes.
I just took a peek: the Featured Photos page had four gauzy simpering 
ladies, including one in a wedding dress, one moodily lit nude, two 
golden-hour mountain landscapes, one duck (in a wildlife sanctuary to boot), 
one bug macro (with two bugs), one rally car barreling down the track (no 
motorbikes, though), and one somewhat blurry photo of nothing in particular. 
Also one grimacing kid that would look pretty interesting in an album, two 
storm landscapes... and one actually pretty nice scene of a bookshop with a 
lady sunken in thought and interesting light coming through the window.
Boredom And More Cameras
There's nothing actually wrong with shooting boring photographs. It can even 
be fun; the technical challenge does make the process of shooting them 
interesting (at least for a while), and there's always the satisfaction of 
seeing through a conjuring trick -- being able to look at other people's 
boring photographs and going, "Ah-ha! I know how he did that one!" However, 
in the long run it gets deeply unfulfilling.
Most amateur photographers appear to be gearheads to a greater or lesser 
extent. I know a few who aren't, who make do with the same beat-up old Nikon 
and a single lens for years and years. I'd very much like to think of myself 
as falling into that category, but alas, it is not to be -- I'm as 
gear-headed as they come. I'd spend all my disposable income on cameras, if 
I didn't have a wife to remind me that there are other things in life that 
are more important. The question is, why?
I believe that an underlying reason is the unconscious dissatisfaction that 
comes with stopping to pursue a hobby for yourself and starting to pursue it 
for others. No matter how many flower macros or gauzy young ladies you 
shoot, after the inital kick you got from getting it exactly as sharp or 
gauzy or simpering as you intended, you end up looking at them and feeling 
vaguely empty inside. So, the natural impulse is to fill that void by buying 
some more of the delectable gear that's being offered to us from all 
directions.
  What shall we use to fill the empty spaces
  Where the waves of hunger roar?
  Shall we set out across this sea of faces
  In search of more and more applause?
  Shall we buy a new guitar?
  Shall we drive a more powerful car?
  From "Empty Spaces," by Roger Waters
The nasty thing about buying more cameras (or lenses, or lights, or 
whatever) is that it works. In the short term, anyway. When you buy a new 
toy, you play with it. As you play with it, you go out and shoot pictures. 
Since it's different than your old toys, you do things differently, and get 
some stuff that doesn't leave you feeling all empty inside. Then you start 
thinking of other people again, get back in a rut, and start churning out 
more flower macros and gauzy ladies, and the emptiness inside starts 
building up again, and so you start lusting after yet some other piece of 
equipment, and then one day your pocketbook is thick enough or you simply 
can't restrain your horniness and go buy it, and then you get another kick 
which makes it that much easier to succumb the next time. Somewhere along 
the road the emptiness might even get transmuted into bitterness, and you'll 
start making snide comments about blurry artsy pictures, or poorly-focused 
technically bad pictures, or people with the wrong brand of camera. 
Eventually you might think "fuck it!" and start producing blurry, grainy, 
ugly pictures of nothing in particular, and get a momentary kick out of 
knocking over all the idols you so painstakingly built, until you realize 
that you're only following another set of conventions, in order to please 
another crowd, only this time it's a smaller crowd who likes to wear black, 
smoke a lot, and sit around in cafés. While all this time the little 
creative you that got you into the hobby in the first place whimpers in some 
dank, dusty, cobwebby corner of your soul, neglected and forgotten, with no 
way of making itself hear except through that feeling of emptiness, the 
silence that you so desperately want to drown out by shutter-clicks and 
megapixels and fluorite lens elements and A3+ sized printers and Alien Bees 
and beat-up old Leicas.
Why Do We Bother?
The big one. The question that most of us will end up facing, sooner or 
later, perhaps after the emptiness strings itself out into a needlepoint of 
frustration disguised as anger, that night when we end up drinking too much 
and make a little bonfire of all our negs or CD's or whatever we use to 
store our precious "work." Why? Why do we spend such an inordinate amount of 
time and effort in thinking about cameras, discussing cameras, operating 
cameras, buying cameras, selling cameras? What was it that got us into 
photography in the first place? Usually the reasons weren't stated or 
consciously defined; more often than not they're forgotten.
My first experience of photography as something in itself was when I was 
about ten and my father made some prints off a black-and-white film he'd 
shot on a trip to America. There were killer whales in those pictures. I was 
with him in the darkroom, and watched those bold black and white shapes 
slowly fade into view. I still remember the fascination, and the feeling 
that I've got to learn that. In the beginning, photography is instinctual. 
Some are so talented that that's all they'll ever need; that, and practice. 
The rest of us will eventually start to work consciously on what we're 
doing, whether it's through attention to composition through "rules," 
dissecting the work of photographers we admire, setting ourselves 
assignments ("one photo a day, every day, with one lens and one type of 
film; no more, no less"), joining camera clubs, or submitting our work to 
Photosig. All of this does exert a pull towards blandness. Most of us 
succumb to it at one point or another. Some are never released from the 
beguiling clutches of flower macros and gauzy ladies. Yet others turn what 
started out as a passion into a profession, and start shooting flower macros 
and gauzy ladies for money, for customers equally imprisoned by the 
invisible chains of convention. And with every shutter click, that little 
character retreats further into the cobwebby recesses of the soul. Yet a 
quite a few manage to shake it off, eventually. They get to the point where 
they ask themselves the big question. Then they either find some kind of 
answer and start making interesting pictures again, give up photography 
altogether, or find inspiration in looking for it.
Asking the question is the key; the answers don't really matter in the end.
The Art Form For The Rest Of Us
Very few of us have the capability to put pen to paper and produce anything 
that's remotely interesting to look at. My sister has it. Her boyfriend has 
it even more. This guy from Australia, Hin Chua, has it in gobs. A spark 
from the fire of Prometheus burns brightly in them. They don't need 
photography, although they actually happen to be pretty damn good at it.
For genuine, true-blue artists, photography is a medium among other media. 
For the rest, it is one of the few ways in which we can produce objects of 
artistic value. Even pure accident will occasionally produce a 
photographically interesting image, and the techniques involved are so 
simple that a few days to a week of practice and instruction is enough to 
acquire the basic competence to produce images with intention. Even that 
level of technical competence is purely optional -- with modern cameras, 
simply pointing and clicking can produce art that is every bit as valuable 
as a David painstakingly chipped out of a block of marble.
Photography is the art form that's best suited for us uncreative people. It 
alone of the arts produces its artifacts through a direct, physical 
connection with the external world -- and the world is inherently 
interesting. A photographer does not need to be a creative genius in order 
to produce interesting or artistically valuable objects -- he merely needs 
to notice what is interesting in the world. What he lacks in genius, his 
subjects can provide. All that you need to get interesting photographs is to 
go out into the world and get them.


http://194.100.88.243/petteri/pont/Pontification/o_Boring_Photographs/a_Boring_Photographs.html
Azz... l'avete trovato.
E 'mo chi le ferma piu', le pare...

 E 'mo chi le ferma piu', le pare...
chissà magari ricominciano a prendere in mano la macchina fotografica
invece che scrivere cazzate sul NG