How do you avoid making a cliché?
Thursday, February 24, 2011 at 8:40AM | in Making Pictures 
Alec Soth's work is anti-cliché. He creates original images of often familiar subjects. My favorite is the book within the book in "From Here To There: Alex Soth's America".
How do you avoid making photographs that are clichés? Chances are that you can’t, at least not completely.
Why is it so hard?
Avoiding clichés requires one of two things: An original approach or an unexplored subject matter and ideally, both. In other words, figuring out a new way to make pictures of a tried and true subject is one way. This usually means telling a specific, dynamic story. The other is to discover or conceive of a subject that hasn’t been trampled to stereotype. Do both and you’re a genius.
Let’s start with a list of THE TOP 10 CLICHéS*
- People with an illness, especially children
- Twofer: Portraits of people with their arms crossed; portraits of people holding portraits of people who are most likely dead.
- Photos of the odd person out (Anyone who is outside the norm. I realize that this puts most journalistic photography into cliché land. And it is.)
- Cowboys or Native Americans
- Twofer #2: Photos of strippers or the homeless
- Photos of famous people
- Photos not made in your home country
- Photos of anyone in any type of uniform
- Twofer #3: Silhouettes or photos of the backs of people
- Photographs that include window reflections
Amazing photographs of all these subjects and approaches to making pictures have been made and used for decades, and they will continue to be made successfully for decades to come.
The challenge is that the more clichéd the subject or approach to making a picture, the more you have to do better than what has been done. The first step is recognizing why it’s a cliché.
One thread through all of these is the perception that the subject matter makes the photograph interesting, especially when the subject is perceived to be inherently interesting. That’s the nature of a cliché, at one point they are interesting but the subject matter has been tapped so many times at the superficial level that new iterations aren’t engaging. That’s also why the odd person out category is so attractive to pursue - the subject isn’t like you.
Follow that logic through some of these examples. You’ve probably heard the advice: “If you want to make a mark in the business, go overseas and make pictures.” Some people go to photograph conflict or other forms of devastation, others go in search of life that is different and there are fewer photographers. But if your pictures aren’t well made in your home country, they probably won’t be overseas. Unless you change, or the experience exposes you to a new paradigm.
Sick children are another class of story that has inherent drama - life and maybe death, relationships, a universal aspect - we’ve all been young - and a child’s illness is a process to follow. Most stories about sick children are process stories. They track the progression of a disease to a conclusion.
Process stories are those that follow something in a this-then-that way and the photographs are mostly about the verb layer, they’re similar in composition and distance from the subject, the light works only as well as it does wherever things are happening in the process and photos are often converted to black and white because you can’t make the color work in those settings.
Photographs of famous people that rely on recognizing the person and his or her notoriety/face to be interesting are another class.
So how do you go beyond what has been done to exceed the clichéd path? Clarity, uniqueness and depth of the story you set out to tell is the best way. That’s true whether it’s a well trodden topic or not.
If your story has a beginning, middle and end and that’s it, then it had better be a phenomenal trio. If the pictures don’t go beyond the title of your story, then evolve the story telling. If you find versions of your story subject done by others and what you’re doing is no better, then make it better.
If you need help elevating the story, I’m here.
* There are actually 13 listed. The list could be hundreds long. (A shorter list would be things that aren’t clichés.)
Reader Comments (11)
Great Post Master Mike!
two comments:
1. I have an assignment to shoot Native American Cowboys coming up... am I just plain screwed?
2. There were several stories that won POYi this year that were SO dang cliche, what is up with that?
respectfully yours.
@Jan: Hah! I guess you'll just have to work twice as hard on that assignment.
Clichés do get awarded, ideally when the image exceeds what's been done before.
Next, you should discuss sports clichés.
Another excellent post, Mike. I've read it twice already this morning and should probably read it again. I have to say something about this topic frustrates me. Why are editors and publications so drawn to assigning and publishing stories that perpetuate these and other clichés?
Mike; an interesting and important post, because avoiding cliches and stereotypes should be the driving force behind new work.
I don't think, however, that your list of ten or thirteen items is actually a list of cliches. It is a list that has a number of different categories in it. Some of them are subjects and topics (1, 4, 5, 6) and some are common styles (2, 9, 10).
I don't think a subject or topic is by itself cliched or stereotypical. It depends on how it is done and how it is located in a broader context. So, for example, number of 4 is well done in the work of Aaron Huey, but poorly done by others. But as a subject it is not inherently cliched.
@ Ann Arbor: You raise an aspect of the topic that I chose to avoid. Picture editors and publications are just as guilty as photographers in latching onto what has worked and thinking it works now because it did before. The more the publishing industry hangs onto what worked before, the more dust they will have in the road before them.
@ David Yes. I agree with your description of the list, for the most part. Thanks for clarifying. #4 is a cliché in that many people approach those subjects thinking that their photos will be good because 1. Many photos on the topic that are good exist and/or 2. They think the subject is inherently interesting and therefore their photos on the subject will be interesting.
I did leave off the list kids in sprinklers as a cliché because I thought we'd moved beyond them. But then I judged another contest.
Hi Mike,
certainly there are too many pictures which are cliche . Avoiding to take the cliche doesn't result in a picture though - just no picture at all! So, how to be non-cliche, that's the question.
You offer here two ways: an 'original approach' and/or an 'unexplored subject matter'.
And your list has some good examples of subject matters which we have seen over and over again.
The point is though, the moment you compare your list to the latest pictures we actually found interesting (see the comment of @jan), you have to revise it (see your comment to @jan's comment).
I believe, it's not the subject matter, what makes a cliche, but rather the formal approach to the subject matter.
I found the nice quote of Salvador Dali on wikipedia which illustrates my point:
"The first man to compare the cheeks of a young woman to a rose was obviously a poet; the first to repeat it was possibly an idiot."
Another description of the cheeks of the woman does not make a cliche, but using the same formal approach does.
So, how to make a non-cliche image?
Maybe trying to forget all cliche-images, one has in mind and trying to let the subject matter arrange the form, rather than trying to force the cliche 'over' the subject matter.
Uhm, am I sounding confused?
OK, can anyone help me here: How to make a non-cliche picture?
Best,
Thomas
(And another question, how the heck do I type this accent aigu?)
@Mike: Would you offer some examples of photos and more importantly photo stories that have broken through the clichès?
@ Thomas: I love the Dalí quote. That is the point of the post. And to make an accent mark, type option e and then the letter you want accented.
@ Dave: Most of the World Press winners this year break the cliché. One that comes to mind is Fernando Brito's essay about killings in Mexico's drug war. Many stories have been done but Fernando's seeks an essence of the extraordinary complexity. Sometimes simplifying the complex is the best way.
I'll work on putting together a more specific set of stories or suggestions for reference.
I remember at Geekfest this past year when you were going over a silhouette photo and all the photographers in the audience were all 'ooohh gaaa gaaa' and you said something like "you only get one silhouette photo per year, so choose it wisely". That made my year.
Damien