Notes for A History of Bad Photography: part 2

My imagined survey of what’s good about bad photography is taking shape…

Subway and blur, Tokyo, 1961 - William Klein

William Klein has said that blur is part of photography’s own language. This picture wouldn’t have made the edit for a lot of street photographers working in 1961, or today, but he recognises that this is photography doing what only photography can do. It’s part of the ‘medium specificity’ of the camera to signify movement in this way. In another of his most famous photographs from 1955, it turns a dancing child into ‘the kid with the beard’ (as he recalls).

Photographers seem to have a love/hate relationship with blur. For some it’s to be avoided at all costs. For others (like Marco Vernaschi for example, or Antoine D’Agata) it’s either a key part of the image’s meaning, or a by-product of what really matters and therefore not something to worry about.

Klein has a love/hate relationship with New York City. Being on the street there (or Tokyo, or London) is a reminder that our eyes are so familiar with ‘photography’s own language’ that we seem to see motion as blur (or even experience squinting into bright sunlight as over-exposure; though we might not call it that). This is why photography’s idiosyncrasies and failures are so significant: photography has shown us how to see.

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