I recently read, although I can’t remember where, an established street photographer’s rant about all the visual tropes he felt had grown tired and tiresome. He made a list of all the things he would no longer shoot and he urged fellow street photographers to join him in his little boycott. One of the items on his list was photographs of people carrying umbrellas. In general, I agree that, as with good writing, so with good photography: avoid clichés. That said, I offer a couple exceptions.
First, aspiring photographers learn by shooting clichés. If you turn your rule against photographing clichés into an absolute prohibition, then nobody plays, nobody has any fun, and nobody discovers anything new. So hop to it. Make hay while the sun shines. Take no prisoners. Be your best self. Be a photography thought leader.
Second, there is no such thing as a photograph of an umbrella. I’m not flogging Magritte’s dead pipe (“Ceci n’est pas une pipe”) which I take to mean that a representation of a thing should not be equated with the thing itself. I’m getting at something more straightforward. The fact is: most photographs of umbrellas are not photographs of umbrellas; they’re photographs in which umbrellas happen to appear. They’re photographs of scenes in which the umbrella may have an important place, but most likely the umbrella is only one of a constellation of features that coalesce to produce the photograph.
In the case of the photograph featured here: is this a photograph of a red umbrella? or is it a photograph of a woman holding a red umbrella? or is it a photograph of a woman crossing a slushy road holding an umbrella? or is it a photograph of a woman crossing a slushy road holding an umbrella while a red car approaches from the opposite direction? And so on.
