🎥 The Disease of Aesthetic Photography (And Why It’s Ruining The Medium)

There's a specific kind of sickness that has infected photography. [music] It's a kind of visual Botox, if you will. You know it when you see it. Let me paint the scene for you. It's perfectly diffused lighting, the subject's centered just so, and a cinematic sort of color grade that screams, "I used a recipe to make this [music] image." It's all technically correct, and yet it feels as alive as a taxidermied bird. Beautiful, sure, but undeniably dead. And today we're going to be discussing what that is. All right, my name is Jared Thomas Tapia. I'm a social documentary photographer and educator here in New York City, and you're watching [music] my YouTube channel. Across my social media platforms, I've created six different segments, all of which pertain to certain aspects of photography. Crafting a photograph, life through the lens, marks of the maker, the creative connection, [music] tools of the trade, and field notes. And today's video, we're going to be taking from the segment marks of the maker, the series dedicated to my own personal philosophies, practices, and moments that have shaped my visual identity. Today's lesson is for sure going to ruffle some feathers. When I posted this article a couple months ago on Substack, it was well received and well disliked. I want to start by saying that this video's intention is not to diminish anybody's work. It's not to diminish what >> [music] >> you find interesting, and it's not to diminish the form of photography as a whole. My whole platform is based on education and the work that I make. The main things that I like to try and articulate in my educational videos is your own personal vision and own personal story. And what we're discussing today is in direct contrast to creating your own visual identity, and it's something that's plagued the photographic community since the inception of Instagram. And that's the obsession >> [music] >> with aesthetics. Photography today suffers from an overdose of aesthetics. It's got a terminal case of style over substance. We've entered the era of photography where anybody with an iPhone or really any phone can make a good image. It's easier than ever to achieve great lighting and good compositions, to create a polished little color grade. And on paper, you might think, "Hey, that sounds like progress to me." But in reality, beauty has become a wallpaper. People scroll past images just as fast as people walk past a perfectly staged cafe in Soho. It's nice to look at, but it's got no soul. The problem is is that we've mistaken good-looking for good, as if beauty alone could carry the weight of meaning. And this isn't something that's just particular to Instagram. It's kind of like how our society shaped up now. We value beauty over meaning on just about every front. But all of that is just so hollow. It's like the artistic equivalent of eating frosting with no cake underneath it. There's just no substance there. The difference between a nice photograph isn't sharpness or tone. It's the story that it tells. Open Instagram and you'll find yourself wading through an endless stream of beautiful nothings. Golden light on some sort of wall, a girl holding a coffee and with soft focus, a subject [snorts] that's been curated into this weird sense of melancholy. And the problem is is that it's all pretty technically flawless. It's crisp, it's cinematic, but it's algorithmically approved. And that is precisely the problem. These images are designed to please, not to provoke. They're built for engagement, not endurance. And somewhere between the dopamine hit of likes and the death of patience, storytelling has gone out of fashion. I've met so many other photographers that worry so much more about performance than what a photograph actually has to say. We've traded narrative for novelty and emotion for exposure. And we've sort of curated sincerity as like a sense of style. I mean, how many different times have you heard about intention? And I think that the problem is is that storytelling takes time. It it it asks something of you. And in this weird culture that we've created that is so dependent on speed, taking your time is seen as inconvenient. [music] So we adapted and adopted and simplified. We've sort of stopped exploring the world and started [music] curating it. We don't follow stories anymore. We manufacture this weird coherence, and coherence is like the enemy of truth. And that's because life doesn't unfold in this symmetrical way. You know, life stumbles and it contradicts itself, and it collapses into moments that don't make sense. [music] Storytelling photography embraces that. And aesthetics has become kind of like a substitution for meaning. It's like a sort of loosely designed prosthetic for imagination. [music] And the thing that makes me upset about it is that there was a time [music] in photography when beauty had context. There was a moment in time when it was a byproduct of truth, not the whole product itself. Case in point, let's talk about Gordon Parks for a second. His images are beautiful, lighting gorgeous, but the moment in the photograph was real. It wasn't constructed, it was witnessed. [music] But today, we reverse engineer that structure. We simulate emotion and we stylize things like poverty [music] and tragedy, love and loneliness, all of it into something more digestible. It's easy to consume and borderline impossible to actually feel the weight of. God, and we've become so obsessed with looking professional, as I say in this suit, but I've got a t-shirt on underneath. Give me a break. Now, the irony is that the obsession of aesthetics is killing the very thing that it claims to serve, which [music] is attention. The more polished the image, the faster it disappears. The digital age rewarded immediacy and it punished nuance. We've become so conditioned to scrolling that anything demanding contemplation feels like a chore. And the result is that photographers have started chasing what is algorithmically approved and not what challenges the audience. [music] And the camera, which was once a tool for inquiry, has become sort of a sense of self-identity, a sort of accessory [music] to who you are. People have started to wear it as a badge, as if it says that I see, too, even if that seeing is shallow. We no longer explore the world with our lenses. We've sort of curated it for a predetermined aesthetic. It's like the photograph has no longer become evidence of seeing, but rather proof [music] of branding. Everyone wants their work to flow. You look at their grid, everything is so perfectly aligned, as if [music] life itself exists in these perfectly made color palettes. But the visual storytelling image has [music] always been more than just a record. I don't know, to me it's always kind of felt like this weird sense of reckoning. I mean, when Lewis Hine was climbing the [music] bones of the Empire State Building, he wasn't thinking about aesthetics. He was documenting the backbone of a nation. And when Dorothea Lange shot Migrant Mother, she wasn't thinking about creating a beautiful image. She created a mirror, and that mirror forced America to see itself. I mean, you think about the creation of Napalm girl in Vietnam. That wasn't aesthetics, that was the truth of a real moment. And when Gordon Parks documented segregation, he didn't decorate suffering, he exposed it. I don't know if this makes sense, but people don't photograph people anymore. They photograph looks. Like the human being [music] has become a prop, a sort of shape to balance the frame, or like a texture to complete [music] their tonal curves. And in doing so, we've stripped photography of what made it revolutionary, its ability to translate feeling into form. What I'm getting at here is that these images didn't just exist, [music] they disrupt. They confronted and they inspired change. They turned photography into a moral discussion. But today we've kind of euthanized that language. We've turned all of that into a mood. This is usually around the time that people got through the article that I wrote and then didn't read the rest of it where I talk about if you want to create just to create, if you're into [music] photography just to capture stuff, to make pretty images, that's fine. That's perfectly okay. That's what this medium is for. It doesn't always need to be so serious. My gripe is that it's more that than what photography can do. And we've sort of flipped that switch in our mind to not care about images that tell a story and praise images that AI can make now. But storytelling photography still matters because it's the closest thing that we have to empathy made visible. [music] It's the one art form that can collapse the idea of them and us. It turns suffering into understanding and moments into feeling and strangers into witnesses. Storytelling doesn't begin with a camera. It begins with >> [music] >> attention and curiosity, and with a willingness to actually care about what you're looking at. Seeing, for the most part, is very mechanical. Everybody observes things. A camera can see. Corny as this sounds, the thing a camera can't do [music] is wonder. Every generation needs its own Hine, its own Lange, its own Parks. Not just to replicate their style, but to reclaim their intent and to point a camera not just at the world, but into it. Now, the first mistake that photographers make is assuming that the storytelling photograph comes from the camera. It doesn't. It begins [music] before you even lift it. It begins in curiosity and awareness and [music] in the willingness to pay attention. So, ask yourself when you're out photographing, why this moment? Why this person? Why right now? And if you can't answer that question, then you're not really making a photograph, you're just taking one. >> [music] >> If aesthetics are about what something looks like, then the storytelling photograph is about [music] what it means. And meaning isn't found in composition, it's found in connection. When you photograph someone, you're borrowing their likeness, but you're also taking their story. The best photographers know this and they tread lightly. They don't take, they listen. [music] They let the subject dictate the tone, even if it's silent. What are they feeling? What are they not saying? What are they hiding just beyond the surface of their expression? A good portrait doesn't flatter, it reveals because that's where the meaning of the photograph lives. To think like a storyteller is to stop forcing moments [music] and start recognizing them. It's to look at a frame not as composition, but as a conversation between you and the world. [music] What is the city trying to say? What's this moment revealing about the people [music] within it or about you? Technically speaking, the storytelling photograph isn't about rules, it's about rhythm. Light, color, form, yeah, all of them matter, but to a certain extent, so long as they serve emotion. Use composition to guide that feeling, not to decorate it. The truth is that perfection is boring. It's like the artistic equivalent of small talk. It's polite and digestible, but just sort of insanely forgettable. So, make images that stumble and that surprise you. If the image doesn't evoke something, discomfort, [music] warmth, tension, melancholy, then it's just another aesthetically [music] pleasing corpse. The great storytellers like Lang and Meyerwitz and Bresson and Parks, [music] Meyer, all understood that the power of a photograph relies in implication. [music] They knew that outside of the frame is just as important as what's inside the frame. Because the truth is that storytelling photography [music] isn't about being at the right place at the right time. It's about being aware enough to know that [music] you're in the right place at the right time. The storytelling image is dying or worse, it's already dead. In its wake stands a replacement, a sort of false leader, its body everywhere. In the grids of influencers or in the brand campaigns that pretend to be candid or in the countless amount of photographers that somehow all travel to the same exact destinations and take the same exact photographs of the same mountain or the same cup of espresso. Aesthetic photography has become formulaic, a sort of visual muzak for the digital age. It's pleasant and familiar, but completely devoid of actual feeling. Aesthetic photography has also fallen victim to its own success. Once beauty became easy to replicate, it's it's lost its value. Presets and tutorials [music] and AI retouching, we've mechanized what used to be instinctual. The photograph, once an act of personal interpretation, has sort of been flattened into [music] a template. It's no longer about how well you see, but how well you can imitate what's already been seen. [music] I mean, we now live in an era where a photograph doesn't even need a photographer anymore. Artificial intelligence can conjure up anything in a second. A face that's never existed or a street that nobody's ever walked down before. A sunset that was never worn. And yet, for all of their visual fidelity, these images [music] feel hollow. And I feel like we're moving in a direction where the art of photography is one step behind what AI is already capable of. What's dying then isn't beauty itself, it's the monopoly of what beauty once meant. And I think that there is partially a good group of people that are realizing that beauty without imperfection is just decoration. Great photographers always understood this. Robert Frank shot with a rawness that felt like truth. And Daido Moriyama embraced blur and grain [music] like it's an emotion. Nan Goldin's work is personal, but it's messy and and it's alive. All of these photographers' photographs [snorts] are full of feeling and [music] noise. And that's because they weren't chasing beauty, they were chasing reality. If photography has lost its way, then it's this new generation's job to find a new way or remember the way it was. To become a better photographer, you have to unlearn what the internet has taught you. Forget consistency, forget the feed. Because the photographers that endure and have endured throughout history are not necessarily the ones that are easiest to recognize. They're the ones that are the hardest to forget. [music] A well-rounded photographer isn't defined by technical precision, but more so emotional literacy. You can master every lens on the market, every film stock and >> [music] >> understand color grading from different presets and still have nothing to say. And that's because gear can't teach you empathy. [music] To be well-rounded is to balance the craft with conscience. It's not just about how to photograph, but why. And you do this by starting to study everything, painting and cinema and literature, architecture, jazz. And that's because storytelling doesn't begin [music] with photography, it's an ecosystem of influences. Read James Baldwin and you'll understand people better. Do you think you could describe yourself as a revolutionary writer? I I'm a writer I'm a I'm a writer in a revolutionary situation. I never thought of becoming a revolutionary at all. Listen to Miles Davis and you'll understand rhythm. Watch Oz you and you'll understand patience. All of it feeds the same hunger and that need to translate experience into something visible. You have to develop what I call emotional endurance. That means shooting when the light isn't right or when the scene isn't perfect. Maybe when you don't even necessarily feel inspired. And you have to do this because [music] the truth doesn't wait for your mood. Some of the most meaningful photographs have been taken when the world feels utterly ordinary. The ones where you're not performing as a photographer, but just being human. We have to stop chasing the idea of the perfect image and instead start chasing understanding. The more that you understand about people, their fears, their humor, their contradictions, the more your photographs will speak to that. Because every great image that's been made >> [music] >> is really empathy disguised as [music] timing. And every photograph is a question. The aesthetic photograph asks to be admired. The storytelling photograph asks to be understood. One lives on a feed, the other lives on in memory. And remember that photography is not a sprint, [music] it's a lifetime of observation. You'll make thousands of bad photographs before you make one honest one. >> [music] >> But that's not failure, that is the apprenticeship of seeing. Every frame teaches you something about attention and empathy, patience and humility. Every photograph, even the forgettable ones, brings you closer to who you are as an observer. And the beautiful thing about this craft is that by extension, it'll bring you closer to who you are as a person. Becoming a better photographer isn't about becoming a perfect [music] one, it's about becoming present. It's about remembering that the camera [music] isn't a shield between you and the world, it should be a bridge. A good photograph doesn't ask the [music] viewer to admire you, it asks them to feel something about that moment. So, if you're just starting off, stop chasing relevance. Stop trying to be seen by everybody. Not until you started to really see what makes you uniquely you. Every photograph, [music] at its core, is a question. It's a small, fragile attempt to understand [music] the world before it's gone. And having a camera doesn't grant you mastery, [music] it grants you permission. Permission to look, permission to ask and to to bear witness [music] to the world around you. But it's you as the artist and the photographer that has to choose what to do [music] with that permission. And what you choose to do with that permission defines not only who you are as a photographer and an artist, [music] but as a person. Because in the end, the only legacy that a photographer leaves behind is not [music] how good their pictures were, it's how deeply they made somebody feel. If there's any truth left in photography, it's this. Beauty fades and algorithms shift and trends expire, [music] but a photograph with soul never does. It becomes part of our collective memory, quietly shaping how we remember the moments that we've gone [music] through. All right, everybody. Well, that's going to be it for today's video. I hope that this was helpful to some people and maybe change the way that they think about their own work in relation to the grand scheme of the medium. Again, this isn't intended to diminish anybody or knocking anybody down, but it is meant to challenge you and make you think about whether you want to be a part of the herd when it comes to the medium or create something for yourself that could last longer than your lifetime. So, this has a coordinating Substack article with it called the disease of aesthetic photography. You can find me on Instagram at Jared Tape. You can find me on TikTok at Jared Thomas Tape underscore and on Substack at the creative connection. There's really nothing else to say except get out there and get shooting and I'll catch you on the next one. >> [music]