I am afraid that there are more people than I can imagine who can go no further than appreciating a picture that is a rectangle with an object in the middle of it, which they can identify.

They don’t care what is around the object as long as nothing interferes with the object itself, right in the centre. Even after the lessons of Winogrand and Friedlander, they don’t get it. They respect their work because they are told by respectable institutions that they are important artists, but what they really want to see is a picture with a figure or an object in the middle of it. They want something obvious.

The blindness is apparent when someone lets slip the word ‘snapshot’. Ignorance can always be covered by ‘snapshot’. The word has never had any meaning. I am at war with the obvious.

William Eggleston, afterword from The Democratic Forest (1988)

Wait, allow me to re-phrase that

In spite of the lessons of Winogrand and Friedlander, I appreciate a picture that is a rectangle with an object in the middle of it, which I can identify. I do not care whether or not what is around the object interferes with it, and, I couldn’t care less about who told me what about Winogrand and Friedlander. I still like my occasional dose of the obvious.

Let’s not bring snapshot to the table, they deserve all the respect they can get, they certainly get plenty from me. And I’d rather not debate if the word has meaning or not, I’m sure it has different meanings depending on who you talk to.

And no matter how much I respect Eggleston’s war with the obvious—and I do respect it greatly—I embrace it.

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(Deleting most of my stuff from the tumblr account, and wanted to keep this post. Since 2010 I think)