I don’t want to believe anything is off the table!” Pretty much everyone said, “I don’t want to believe in self-censorship. I asked about things they avoid themselves. Well, I didn’t ask people what they thought others shouldn’t photograph. What did photographers say when you reached out to them, asking them about what people shouldn’t photograph? Sometimes it’s a subject that’s too easy, or sometimes it’s, Oh, I’m not being fair to this subject, or it’s a picture that you’ve already taken too many times, or maybe it’s just that the lighting looks bad. It’s about the things photographers avoid, or the things you stop yourself from taking a picture of, for whatever reason. I thought, This is a really bad idea! And then I kept photographing and I got over it, and we started talking about the book again.Īperture describes the book as meditations on “bad” pictures - bad with quote marks. I was second-guessing every single picture. Then I pulled out of it because the idea paralyzed me. I first pitched this idea several years ago to Aperture and we all agreed to do it. The book is a series of essays by photographers, listing out what they don’t like taking photographs of and why. But it’s implied that he knows it’s a guilty pleasure he knows they’re an easy subject or even something that people don’t want to look at. Jeff Mermelstein writes about pigeons - he can’t stop taking pictures of them. In a way, some of the pieces in the book are exceptions to a rule, which is implicit in everything once you get into it. And the sunset was only one element that added to the whole. Or Alex Webb wrote about avoiding sunsets - but then he made a picture he loves, of a sunset that also included a combination of light sources and colors and a silhouette of a person. But instead of taking a picture just of the light or the person, he’ll wait for something to come along into the frame and interact with that initial inspiration, and then that elevates the picture. He’ll be out on a street corner and something sparks it - the light hitting in a certain way, an interesting person. My friend Gus Powell shoots on the street a lot. So some photographers avoid these subjects altogether. Cacti, cemeteries, fireworks, lighthouses, peacocks. It’s difficult to go beyond that surface quality. Sometimes it’s challenging to make a good picture of a subject that is too photogenic. What makes something a photography “no-no”? The book includes suggestions and “rules” from about 240 photographers, editors, and curators. We spoke with Fulford in Brooklyn about what he learned while working on this book, and why every rule was meant to be broken. The final book is less of a blueprint to an objectively “good” photograph and more of a roller coaster that takes you through highs and lows, personal obsessions, and pet peeves of some of the world’s greatest working photographers. He crowdsourced advice and insight from famous photographers, such as Alec Soth and William Wegman, asking them what they try not to take pictures of and why. His new book, Photo No-Nos: Meditations on What Not to Photograph, was assembled during the pandemic lockdown. Good photographs are out there waiting to be taken, and Jason Fulford is on a mission to figure out how we find those photographs that “transcend” their subject.įulford is a photographer and publisher who often works with others in the photography world to explore their minds and work. But that doesn’t mean that any of us should quit, throw the camera down, and take up basket weaving. Whether it’s phone photos of a tourist site that our maps app points us to over and over, or how we’re all slowly starting to look like the same generic Instagram influencer, photos can be repetitive, trite, and overdone. If the phrase “there’s nothing new under the sun” were invoked about photography, some images would immediately come to mind.
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