7 days
An AP reader wonders if there’s a deeper reason why there are so few ‘laugh out loud’ photos
Amateur Photographer once had a columnist who wrote humorously under a silly pseudonym. His account of taking an acquaintance to a drinking establishment where the walls were bedecked in Robert Mapplethorpe prints, only realising later it was a gay bar, was particularly funny (assuming it actually happened). Then there was the fabulous, acerbic columnist, Roger Hicks. He once wrote a spoof encyclopaedia account from the future about the digital ‘bubble’ in photography at the start of the millennium.
Not afraid to offend, Roger recounted how he and his partner Frances, cycling in France, would cry out ‘lone tree, lone tree!’ in mockery of amateur photographers who snapped them, mistaking themselves for artists. Today the magazine’s pages are thin on humour and controversy. The editors may feel that their customers – delicate amateurs – need gentleness, encouragement and a sense of purpose, not debate. Moreover, we appear to live in the Era of Hurt Feelings, when there is no ‘wrong’ way, only ‘alternative’ ways, and everyone is free to self-identify as an expert or visual storyteller. But here’s the thing – my radical hypothesis is that photography doesn’t lend itself to humour.
Here comes the pun When I say that few photographs are funny, many will disagree. The names Elliott Erwitt and Martin Parr will be thrown back at me, but the very fact that these two names jump out is probably evidence of how rare they are. On its 70th birthday, a Magnum Photos curator chose one image to represent each year of its history. Only
