
Annons
OBSERVATION #1: CASH = QUALITY

Someone (who presumably cares very little about where their money goes) dropped a cool £2.8million for this picture of a path next to some grass next to a river, making it the most expensive photo ever sold. To quote literally anyone who's ever seen this photo, "Nah, I wouldn't pay that, mate. I could do you one of these with a disposable camera and a train ticket to Bognor." A point that's incredibly hard to argue with. So what makes this so expensive/good? The "rule of thirds" appears to be at work here, but does some arbitrary rule made up 200 years ago to make taking photos seem more complicated than it really is justify such an outlay?
Annons

Cindy Sherman has two photos in the top ten most expensive photos ever sold, so she must be good, right? I'm definitely more instantly immersed in this photo than the river one – what has she read in the paper to make her so bummed out? What's waiting out of shot? Is a full orange outfit a sensible choice for someone with ginger hair? Etc, etc – but does the fact that it provokes questions mean it's a good image? I question myself every time I wind up listening to Radiohead because I fucking hate all of their music. Surely that means internal questions = bad? And why would you pay all that money for something that made you feel bad?

Spending millions of pounds on a photographic print is arguably the best way of kicking a starving child in the teeth, because prints are just that: prints. An original Rothko painting has been painstakingly worked on, to the point that you can examine each separate layer of paint he applied (which justifies spending £55,000,000 on art, rather than giving it to dying infants, btw), whereas the original Jeff Wall print you'd buy at auction started its life as a replica, because that's what all prints are: replications of the negative.
Annons
OBSERVATION #2: DEAD PEOPLE TAKE GOOD PHOTOS

OBSERVATION #3: THE CRITICS MUST KNOW

This photograph depicts a mother cradling her son after he'd been tear-gassed at a protest in Yemen, where at least 12 people were killed and more than 30 injured. The son was in a coma for two days after the incident, and injured on two further occasions as the protests continued.
Annons

This one is of Bibi Aisha, an 18-year-old Afghani girl who was given to the family of a Taliban fighter to settle a dispute between their respective families, forced to marry him when she hit puberty, then abused by his parents. She ran back to her parents, because no one likes being beaten up by their in-laws, then she was tracked down, taken to a mountain clearing and had her ears and nose cut off as punishment for running away.Jesus Christ, that was depressing. For a photo to be W.PPA-worthy, it apparently has to make you involuntarily curl into a ball and cry all the water out of your body, so next tip for spotting a good photo: If it instantly makes you want to kill yourself to escape all the horrors and evil in the world, you're on to a winner.Obviously I'm neglecting a few other genres of photography here – stock images, wedding photography, food photography, etc – but I've never heard someone say, "That picture of hillbilly Santa licking a lollipop surely ranks amongst the greatest, most iconic images of the modern era," so we can forget about them for now. There's all the hipster photographers, too, but that's a whole new realm of quantifying what's good with its own set of rules and codes, normally involving endless dialectics and self-serious head-nodding at photos of wan girls in forests, so let's not get into that for now, either.
Annons
OBSERVATION #4: A PRO MUST KNOW

Lysha: It definitely varies from photo to photo, but good composition helps, and if it's got some history behind it and a good subject matter, that's all cool too.What makes a good composition? Does it have to follow the "rule of thirds"?
No, definitely not. I think if you see a photo and you like it, it's a good photo, regardless of whether it follows the "rule of thirds" or not. Obviously, photos that follow the rule do normally look good – they look professional – but anything can be good, it doesn't have to follow any rules.Why do you think that Gursky sold for so much and amazing photojournalism with an actual subject matter doesn't really sell for anything?
Well, Gursky's seen as fine art, whereas photojournalism is just seen as straight photography. Fine art sells for silly money, obviously, so Gersky's got that going for him.
Annons
No, not at all. It can definitely make a photo more interesting because you've got some reference for what you're looking at, but as long as it's aesthetically pleasing, it's good, you know? And, if it's part of a movement, that can be good. Like, there was an outtake photo from the Abbey Road cover photo shoot in the exhibition I helped with that the media were going crazy over, but this Dora Maar photo sold for, like, three times the price because it has this amazing history behind it. She was Picasso's muse, so there's that.In summary: In order to take a good photograh, you need to have fucked Picasso.-After that doctorate-level case study in photography, I think we can agree to settle on what makes a photo good: expense, death, antipathy and nepotism.So, next time you're trawling through holiday snaps with your friends and come across a particularly funny one of Johnny being pissed on by a monkey, you're permitted to say, "Hey, that's amusing," or "God, I'm glad we got a picture of that," but by absolutely no means should you call it "good" – you'll be laughed off the face of the planet by everyone who you ever thought loved you. Unless monkey piss makes you sad and your friend who took the photo is dead, then you're alright, you expert photo critic, you.Follow Jamie on Twitter: @jamie_clifton
Annons
