On Art: Photography "A picture says a thousand words."

    We've had many discussions in our class lately regarding what comprises "good" art, music, film, writing, etc.  Is good in between excellent and awful?  Is good only a matter of opinion?  Perhaps we read too much into what "good" is supposed to look like and forget to look at something for the basic of what it is.  I thus decided to focus my "On Good Art" summary on photography and the many ways it can be viewed, "bad" and "good".

     "You forgot to take the lens cap off!"  "Your finger is covering half of my face!"  "What is that thing coming of the middle of my head?"  These are all responses to a photograph that I'm sure many of you have heard.  Yet in this case, is it the subjects fault, or the photographers?  I'm sure you'd agree that in these instances fault does indeed fall upon the artist, the photographer.
     I searched Google high and low for answers to good versus bad photography.  Famous shots versus awful shots.  I discovered something highly interesting.  Google didn't have all the answers!  In fact, they hardly had any.  What I did find was the notion that we don't so much focus on the art itself, we focus on the artist (photographer in my case).  As I thought about this more, I began to realize that this is true of other art mediums also.
     Each summer, a neighbor (who lives in Minnesota, but owns a house in Lily) brings a group of 8-12 people to South Dakota for a photography workshop.  During the workshop he gives the group assignments such as find something that resembles a face, i.e., the front of a car with smiling bumper and bright headlight eyes.  Another might be to approach a stranger and ask if you can take their photo.  Photographs connect you to your subject and allow you to view the world in a different "lens".  The ability to do this is in itself an art form.  It's not always something that can be taught.  Sometimes your eye has to be able to make the picture happen.  And sometimes, you have to let it happen.  Beauty and "goodness" will come with trial and error.

     Photography tells a story: a black man standing at a drinking fountain labeled "colored" with another fountain less than five feet away labeled "white."  While writing can and should be descriptive, the ability of a photo is much stronger in some cases to illustrate feelings and depth.  "A picture says a thousand words."  This is why I think photography is a valuable art form in which our judgments based on good and bad should be hesitant.  Don't make any flash judgments.