There is nothing either good or bad, but context makes it so.

A better way to think about photographs

We tend to talk about photographs along one scale: good or bad.

In practice, photographs are usually taken for very different reasons, and they make sense only within those intentions and limitations. Judging them by a single standard often misses the point.

A great LinkedIn headshot wouldn’t work at all on Tinder. That doesn’t make it a bad photograph - it just means it was made to do something else.

So rather than asking whether a photograph is good or bad, it can be more useful to ask what kind of photo it is, and what it’s trying to do. We can think about images along several different axes instead. Here are a few examples:

Reactive ————— Considered

At the ‘reactive’ end we have genres like street photography or reportage: fleeting moments, captured instinctively.

At the other we might think of still life photography, where lighting and composition are very deliberately constructed and adjusted at leisure.

Functional ————— Expressive

A passport photo sits at the ‘functional’ end. It has one job (and any artistic efforts will ensure its rejection).

Further along might be an editorial portrait of a CEO for an annual report. It would need to show they have a “bit about them” and so convey trust, or suggest leadership qualities.

More expressive still might be a magazine portrait, or a band’s album photography. While still having a function (and so remaining legible), these are stylistically much looser, and the photos’ mood and personality matter more. They needn’t be sharp, evenly-lit - or indeed follow any of the standard rules - and therefore leave something unsaid, and pique interest.

Descriptive ————— Evocative

This is my favourite axis, central to so much at the heart of photography (I’ll write about this fully in an upcoming post). It’s the difference between what something looked like, and what it felt like. A passport (again) belongs at one end of the scale, as does a still from a CCTV recording, or a photo of something you’re selling on Vinted. In the middle you’d have moody landscapes, and travel photography in general. At the far end - ‘evocative’ - is where abstract photography lives.

As an aside, news photography is a good example of a genre which can be both descriptive and evocative at the same time. Consider Phil Noble’s recent photo of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor in the police-car.

Personal ————— Public

‘Personal’ photographs would be those made primarily for the people in it or close to it e.g. photos of a holiday, your cat, or a night out with friends.

Note that personal images posted on social media, broadcast to looser connections and even strangers, could be described as ‘public’, even if they don’t really belong there.

‘Public’ would be anything intended to be shared widely, with no specific person or group as the intended audience. News photography is perhaps the clearest example, as it’s meant to be seen and understood by anyone.

Of the moment ————— Timeless

At one end of the scale we have simple family snaps and serious journalism: moments captured and eternalised. At the other end, a typical still life image - flowers in a vase, say - is an example of something timeless, concerned as it might be with shape, texture or colour. It has nothing do with time or place.

Context is (almost) everything

So a more useful starting point than “is this good?” is: “what kind of photograph is this?”

A photograph positioned towards the descriptive, functional, or public ends of the scales will operate very differently from one that is evocative, expressive, or personal. One set explains, the other suggests. One aims for clarity; the other leaves space.

We already understand this distinction in other forms. We don’t judge a shopping list as bad poetry, or a technical manual as bad fiction. With photography, though, those distinctions often collapse into a single, blunt judgement.

Seen this way, many arguments about photographs simply dissolve. The question shifts from whether a picture is impressive to whether it’s appropriate - whether it’s doing the kind of work it sets out to do, given its limitations and genre.

And context plays a large part in this. Where a photograph is seen affects how it’s read. An image that feels unremarkable on Instagram may make complete sense in an annual report. A photograph that works as part of a sequence may feel oddly empty, or at least unsupported, when seen on its own.

This is also why photographs devoid of their original brief are so often judged unfairly. Photographers’ portfolios are an inevitable casualty here: images made for very specific clients and uses end up flattened into a single, often ill-fitting “portrait” gallery, stripped of context.

(As an aside, photographs’ context can change their meaning completely. A news photograph (of-the-moment) can later gain a timeless, artistic quality, because the kinds of images which make headlines are often - by definition - momentous. They go on to become images of inspiration or hope: Muhammad Ali standing over Sonny Liston. Che Guevara. Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima as t-shirts and posters adorning bedroom walls; or of tragedy and horror, like Fire Escape Collapse, Vulture and Child, and Napalm Girl which each had an effect on law, public opinion/ethics, and even government policy.)

Why this matters to me

This way of thinking feeds directly into how I work. My job isn’t about taking pretty pictures, but pictures which are of use. Once I’m mindful about the kind of photograph I’m making, many decisions quietly take care of themselves. What matters, what I can control and what limitations I’m facing, what can be ignored, when I should intervene, and when I can’t, or shouldn’t.

It’s usual to start from the end - to envisage the kinds of shots I want/expect to take, and then work out how to get there. But before that can happen, it’s essential to understand the limitations, the requirements and the purpose. In short: where are they intended for, and what do they need to do?

Shorter still: what’s their context, and do they belong?

So in that sense, what is this picture for? and what type of photo is it? are not so much theoretical questions than they are practical ones. And I’ll come back to how this plays out in practice - where planning, reacting, and working within limits collide - in another post.