As for HOM, you can see subtle evidence in the grooved patterns in the field, rising left to right slightly. So I will add subtlety to simplicity, complementarity, and juxtaposition in one of my previous responses to the question, what is the point? But, Rob, I think there is a place for photographing the bountiful provisions of God just like there's a place for street photography where snaps may depend on pure chance. Why would we want one genre of image making? That may not be what you are saying, however. Fashion photography may be more like painting because of the creative effort that goes into achieving a satisfactory let alone beautiful result. I question your premise, if I understand it, that only the HOM is worthwhile and all else is mere cloning.
I remember a recent exchange with Russ and his quoting Ecclesiastes, "All is vanity," and your comment above about "making the same image" and how that is somehow condemning of our efforts. Not trying to put words in your mouth, but I think of my mother who made her living as an oil painter for more than thirty years. She would do seascapes with variation after variation until she moved on to landscapes or whatever and then back again. Each was unique, each a variation on a theme and this is common with painters, but is that a futile effort? I think not for it may be the progression of subtle differences "seen" by the artist that tells a more interesting story. Formula novels may be predictable, but I still read them.
I wrote a blog article (Why take a photograph?) about a posting by Russ, The Tracks. Nothing new under the sun, but it is still worthwhile sitting around the campfire listening to the same story even if told differently. I just finished "The Pleasure of Finding Things Out" by Richard Feynman and in one of the vignettes he discusses his observations that people think differently even with the seemingly simplest of things, for example, counting. Some compute a mental rhythm while others see a visual image (read the book). But the point is that we all see internally (mentally) differently and there's no guarantee we will "see" the same thing (image, poem, prose, etc) the exact same way the next time we "see" it. I think this may make revisiting old stories, in this case images, meaningful.
By the way, I knew when I took this image that it had probably already been done, but that realization did not diminish my joy at discovering it for myself.
David,
First of all, I am not suggesting but a single photographic culture; there are and can be many. My quibble is an extension of Oscar's question, which is regarding the point of a
specific image. I suppose it comes down to the question of motivation; you more or less explain that yourself, but motivation to do something does not confer point intrinsic within the work. It just denotes one wants to do something, even if for no specific reason than it's there and so is the desire. Much of life is like that; it's what drives the leisure market.
Fashion photography is too wide to classify with an easy categorisation. Much of what I shot was to shift frocks from factory to shops. Another option, different emphasis, was to shift stock from retail outlet to private home. Each had its own requirements and audience, and from my luck of the draw, the second outlet was the more rewarding because, essentially, it had more to do with selling the image of a shop than a particular garment. If you found a client with belief in you, that meant you could build a relationship that provided vital continuity; failure to build a relationship would mean one soon ran out of possible options. It was, in my day, a small, incestuous world where fibs, envy and plotting ruled. No wonder stock provided such a great lure which, in the end, was killed off along with so much else that allowed photography to be a career, as different to just a passing phase, a second string in someone's life.
The creative effort in fashion has little in common with painting. Fashion is about creating something that doesn't really ever exist, even when you snap it. This may seem impossible, but it is true. By the time you and your girl have made the shot, you will never again be able to return to where you were. It is a fleeting moment at best, and even then, just an illusion, a trick in its own right that remains beyond both of you. It's why I always dreaded working a shot with more than one model in it. Getting the stars in line once is cool; wanting them to align in duplicate is rocket science. Painting is different because it is done over a fairly long time, compared with a people snap. Also, unless one is trying to be a photographer with a brush, the result is wide open to the degree it resembled whatever set it in motion.
But to return to that specific shot: I can understand you when you say that you find joy in discovering something new to you, whether or not it has been done before; I get the same buzz aping the New York school by shooting reflections in windows, but only when there is human presence in the shot does it really work for me. The rest of the time it's just abstraction at best, or abject failure. So, when I think it works, what's my supposed point? The answer, for me, is in the caption; and of course, that may only be obvious to me because I felt driven to shoot the thing. Now and again I start out with caption in mind and magically, I run into something that fits the bill. That is the exception, though, and at once, the appeal: I enjoy the winging it aspects of my sort of non-aggressive street. Frankly, it's how I did everything in photography and at once illustrates why I was not mad about team-playing and having people hanging about watching and throwing in their sixpenny bits. Maybe that's the real genesis of Without Prejudice: simply an extension of my own way.
Rob