Human pictures aren’t pictures of people. They’re pictures that mean something to people. And there are as many ways to create them as there are pictures to take.
Rules are great. They’re a great way to learn. They’re a great way to get moving. But they’re not an end. The structure we see and the values we assign – they’re our own artifacts. Impositions that allow us to make something out of the jumble. But there’s no referee in the sky watching everything you do, ready to throw down a flag, because you didn’t follow the rules. Communication is the goal.
Take this crazy, complex, overgrown world of ours, distill it down to something, and you’ve done exactly what you’re supposed to do. You’ve restructured a systemic chaos more complex than we’ll ever know into terms we, as humans, can understand.
Your job is to pick just how you want to boil it down.
Walker Evans sees structure.
Andreas Gursky sees pattern.
Cindy Sherman sees identity.
Nan Goldin sees reality.
The big question? What do you see.
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