On the radio today while driving to work, there was a program about a show of Vermeer's paintings. The gallery took the unusual step of hanging contemporary countrymen's work (other Delf painters) alongside Vermeer's work to let people see through comparison those differences that define his genius. Along with this interesting and educational approach, the commentary described some of the sophistication of Vermeer himself by telling of some influences upon him, saying he did not have an "innocent eye."

Artists with no apparent outside influences are said to have an innocent eye. As I sit here trying to come up with an example of a photographer who wasn't influenced by other photographers, or in the cases of the earliest, by painters, I can't come up with one. Stepping back, development of photography was an almost continuous thing, with diversions here and there for the pictoralists, California School, photo-secessionists and so on, with no one straying too far from the current practice. The schools were evolutionary, rather than revolutionary. In the case of the shocking artist, it was always a case of subject, not method, and there have always been photographers who used shock as a technique, so even that is something of a trend, or, with precedent.

Is there really nothing new under the sun?

Let's suppose we could hypothesize a person completely free of any exposure to photographs or other depictions. Someone who was raised with an education complete in all ways except art. Then let us suppose he was given a camera and told that you look in here and push this button. I wonder what kind of results we'd get. I'd suppose the first instinct would be to make records of things, as that is the obvious. Sort of a handheld photocopier. Exactly a handheld photocopier. Would our innocent ever realize any better use?

Suppose he were to realize some more profound use of photography. Would that use be for beauty or commentary? What would the choice of subject be?

Of course we can't answer those questions as such an experimental subject doesn't exist. Everyone in the whole world has been exposed to photographs. Sontag in On Photography talks of experiences in China during Mao's time, where a photographer visiting was eventually criticised severely for making candid photographs. The culture couldn't conceive of any use for a camera that didn't allow the subjects to pose. They were unable to recognize the beauty we see every day in the fisherman's hands or the bicycle against the wall. It really pissed them off. They knew the correct use of photography was to make smiling group pictures.

In our own culture there are those who believe sincerely that Serrano's Piss Christ was an example of photography used for bad purposes. Calendar kittens are fine. Cultural criticism is fine too, as long as it's of something the viewer is critical of. Criticism is not fine if it's of something sacrocanct, i.e. religion - something not considered to be subject to critique. But critiquing things popularly disliked is just fine. Of course. That is a perfectly "good" use of photography. Nevertheless, Serrano's work was recognizable to our culture as a valid use of photography (though evil).

Seems that "good" use of photography is dependent on the culture. And therefore is seems that the culture influences the uses photography can be put to. So it's likely, if not inevitable, that our "innocent" would eventually follow his culture's guidelines as far as what pictures to make. Approved guidelines.

Recently the Taliban destroyed two giant sculptures of the Buddha. The claim was that Islam prohibits graven images, though more specifically it is a prohibition of the worship of graven images. Judaism and Christianity have the exact same prohibitions incidently. Photography nevertheless thrives in Islamic countries, though probably not in Afghanistan. I'm usually a little nervous carrying my camera around on the streets in Turkey, though there has never been a reason for it. But I always feel there might be some reaction from people on the streets, either the one about soul-stealing, or the graven images thing. I've met some extraordinary Turkish art photographers, and at least intellectually believe that their culture and ours have about the same expectations of photography. But just one cultural hiccup away, their cousins are destroying statues...

Here at home (America, Europe) we're so close to our own cultures that we can't see the fences we put on our art. We can see that in China and Afghanistan there are restrictions. I'd think an alien observer of our culture would be able to see the limits we've imposed on ourselves. By simple extrapolation, there must be limits. But I can't see them.

When Jackson Pollack splattered paint on canvasses, painting was extended beyond the even vaguely pictorial. I don't think he was the first. Is it appropriate to use film and light to make things not even vaguely pictorial? What standards would that kind of thing be judged by? Are photographers doing it? Who? What is the response?

In a Surface magazine survey of avant garde fashion photographers awhile back, one shooter was photographing small sections of skin very close up. Part of the viewing was to guess where that skin was on the model. Another part was to understand why Surface would consider that fashion, as no clothes, no people, nothing but a bit of skin was visible. At the time, Surface really was avant garde, and for them to call that radical work "fashion" profoundly impacted my own ideas of what fashion photography is, beyond the simple "selling rags" definition.

Snake-handlers, raves, donut shops, geriatric wards, body modification, prisons and beauty salons are all popular topics. There are no corners of our culture not photographed. Landscapes, cityscapes, duckponds, deserts, caves and skies have been done. Pinhole, miniature, medium and large formats, polaroid, transparency, negative, B&W, digital, platinum, tintype, micro, macro and everything else have been done. While the potential remains to be the first to photograph a man under a salon hairdryer in the desert using a pinhole camera to make color reversals, it would be a stretch to call that new. And that picture would be well within culturally understandable uses of photography. How can we go outside our own backgrounds, histories and cultures and find uses of photography that are new?

Edwin Abbott's book, Flatland, is a classic in mathematics. The book is about people that live in a two-dimensional world. The plot is their discovery of the third dimension (up-down). With that book as a guide it's possible for us in a three-D world to visualize a fourth dimension (not time). It is trivial for a mathematician to do computation and geometry for four, five or n-dimensioned spaces. but that discovery by the two-D character of up-down might be a guide to how we can see what we are blind to.

Perhaps the first step would be simply writing uses for photography on a sheet of paper. Enclosing all those appropriate to Sontag's Chinese culture in one circle would, by exclusion, show us what they can't see.

Using similar circles for other cultures would give us a graphic representation of which uses are common to all, which are unique to particular cultures, which are shared by several cultures. Venn diagramming, it's called. Boolean algebra. We'd probably avoid making one big loop around everything, as we, the investigators, have already shown our recognition of everything shown, by being able to list them.

Perhaps some pattern of cultural exclusion, say exclusion by Norwegians of abstract war photojournalism, would give us something to think about, some pattern of exclusion that can be applied to the study. Postcard-like pictures of the Virgin of Guadaloupe are used in shrines all over my part of the world. Are the photographs worshipped? Could they be? Would photograph as object of worship be something outside of our cultural understanding? Are there counter-examples?

Would study of those photographic uses excluded from most cultures offer up ideas? Would organizing those excluded in some two or three dimensional plot leave holes in the plot never filled by yet another potential use of photography? What else is possible?

-Don