I've been walking around taking pictures this spring and summer, basically photographing cliches -- and thinking about them. It's funny how both the typology and the grid are such easy devices for photographers (and yours truly) to fall for. Flowers, too. Flatness, too. Painterliness (or maybe "painterliness," since the term is pretty loaded and almost meaningless and cries out for a little ironizing), too. And colorfulness. So the challenge: succumb to as many cliches as possible, but still do something as original as possible. I'm a huge believer in originality -- to the extent that I approve of any gimmick, novelty, or cheap effect that an artist can devise because work like this has more going for it than the standard dull stuff. If, as they say (I think "they" was the Bible), nothing is new under the sun, then everything is also equally potentially new. Each attempt at variation is completely original, and really, it's just a question of degree. Boredom and repetition are the enemy and friend, frenemy and enamigo.
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