thoughts on family album photography – pensamientos sobre la fotografía de familia

all photos have a reason to exist and the photographer has that reason clear when he takes a picture.

the pictures people take themselves are just to remember. art, real emotion, social comment, original technique, original ideas have no importance at all here.

grey generic small town professionals with mortgages take pictures that are only shot to make money. for no other reason. the best way to make money is to repeat a shot a million times each week with different faces and to make it understandeable by those who know nothing and have no interest in understanding. art, real emotion, social comment, original technique, original ideas have no importance at all here either

to try to do something that has some importance long term and beyond the small world of those who actually appear in the pictures guarantees rejection from almost all — all but those who for one reson or another can connect instinctively to captured emotions, the implied rather than the stated, the contradictions of real life, the subtleties that speak more than the obvious, personal techniques, personal points of view and comment, the ideas and processes that are not from that time or perhaps from any specific time period or fashion. these people have no choice but to follow an alternative. only these people do… that is of course until that alternative is bought by the rich and famous.