Bildunwürdigkeit

When I saw an retrospective of, William Eggleston, one of the pioneers of color photography, I listened a bit to what the museum guide had to say about him. He used very sophisticated words and somehow rised even the simples pictures to a pedestal of supreme photographic art. As much as I liked his pictures, I find them overall overrated, but that’s a different subject I shall adress eventually.

What I strongly remember, is how the guide said, that for his time, Eggleston managed to bring “picture-unworthy motives” into a museum. It’s fascinating to think that some years ago, when photography was barely concidered an art, a huge amount of motives where considered “not worthy of being photographed” (in German “bildunwürdig).

Times have changed now, and if you have a look around flickr nowadays, you see that there’s a little Eggleston in all of us, me included, which is a good thing.

So why am I posting this picture. From my experience, most of the scenes I am encountered with every day don’t draw my desire to photograph them, yet again I would never consider anything as completely unworthy. If you have the eye, the feeling and the conviction that there is a great picture inside the “unworthy” scene, then nothing should stop you from taking it, even if it means stepping with your camera into a disgusting looking shower.

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