Willy Ronis - Boules
© Willy Ronis
All the previous ones come, so to speak, with some baggage attached. Knowing more or less about the context affects our response to them. However most of my favourite photographs do not come trailing this sort of stuff. Here is one example. We can enjoy this without knowing anything about it.
Of course we recognise some things and are surprised by them more or less depending on our own experiences. This lithe supple old guy enjoying life in the sunshine is an image that persists, as some things persist that we have seen in real life.
This type of photography doesn't try and tell, or show us something important, or illustrate or make a point. It tells us this is what Willy Ronis saw and liked, or thought interesting. When you view an extended body of work of a photographer like this you start to think you have an idea of his view of life. Might be contrived of course, but it says something about the photographer that the previous images, Adams apart probably, do not tell us.
With photography, a similar thing applies. Taking a photograph, you are saying "look at this differently, look this way". Often, the closer the image is to reality the harder it is to see it as different. As a result we use artifice: Monochrome, Focus, Perspective. All those things help us impose our view on an image, to make that image different and - hopefully - make other people want to look at it. Achieving that part is the validation of what we try to do.
In that perspective, posing and cropping are just additional artifice, none the better or worse. There's a voice in our head that whispers "if we only had <i>that</i> camera with <i>that</i> lens we could create an image like the Willy Ronis and maybe we could - but only if we get lucky.
In China there were so many times I wanted to grab an image and keep it and couldn't or didn't - either because I lack the sharp instinct that Nick Ut or Dorothea Lange display, or I lacked the position or technical skill. What I tried to do instead was work with my version of urban photography, trying to shoot full frame colour most of the time. I'd like to carry on and talk about my perception of the difference in artistic view, but I'm veering a bit off topic. (I'll be recording and talking about it on http://china-remembered.blogspot.com at some point)
So I think when you make the distinction "This type of photography doesn't try and tell, or show us something important" that is a false distinction. The importance may result in a greater impact, but it is the showing that makes it art. The photographer is not significant once the photo has been taken (or made into a print).
So as I tried to to figure this out, the specificity of photography, I was always drawn into using generalities, and then the photograph turned out to be a very slippery object indeed.
So to try and better define it, I think we maybe should look at the uses of photography, how it is consumed, what it means to us as a source of knowledge, communication or just beauty.
I think a lot of your thoughts here fall into the problem of this generalisation. For example I'm not sure that the job of all artists, if they have a job, is to show things differently. Taking this on to photography, and I don't equate photographers with artists anyway, we can see that this is true of some use of photography, but not all. Some photographers will show us something in a new light, others will show us something that we never thought worth looking at in the first place - not necessarily the same thing - and so on.
As regards importance - of course that is a subjective term that I shouldn't have used - but I would maintain that the vision of the photographer, maybe not his own personality, but his photographic personality is important. Look at Walker Evans "American Photographs" or Franks "The Americans" or Winogrands "The Animals" and try and see whether the photographers view does not come across
I love this photo.
Makes me happy.