Karl Ove Knausgård is suspicious of photographs, or any art really, that he likes for primarily aesthetic reasons. A profound Protestantism, he thinks, rejects anything that comes too easily, that doesn’t require effort and work. He worries that he must contemplate a photograph in order to discern its meaning and therefore its significance. Only such photographs that demand such reflection and analysis can be art. This assumption, whether explicitly linked to Protestantism or not, seems common amongst both photographers and people who talk about photography (and also seems to justify, at least in part, the ubiquitous “artist’s statement”). To be art, a photograph must contain but conceal some aspect of the photographer’s identity or philosophy. Often, photographs are mechanisms of self realization and self expression. They must have a real intention.
Today, amongst real photographers and connoisseurs of photography, few compliments are more damning than “beautiful.” Art, it seems, is not beautiful or even pretty, but is meaningful and revelatory. Art demands that we acquire the knowledge to appreciate it as art. Pretty pictures are dismissed as “calendar” or “hotel” art.
I find such an approach limiting and elitist. I am perfectly happy for some creative expression (art?) to have layers of meaning that the sufficiently prepared viewer can disentangle and appreciate. But I am unwilling to imply that only such creative expressions are art. Insofar as I care about other people seeing my work, I would rather thousands of hotel guests looked at one of my photographs as they walked through a lobby than a handful of visitors pondered one while they stood in a gallery. This photograph has no deeper meaning. It is merely a photograph of a flower that somebody found visually pleasing enough to hang in an office. That’s good enough for me.