The more we look the less we see

For a number of years I have been interested in World War I. I have visited most of the important sites and some less well known. I have also read a large number of books most of which had contemporary photographs. I have also seen TV documentaries and visited the Imperial War Museums.

The other day I started to browse through through the book The History of WORLD WAR 1 in Photographs.  [Parrogon Publishers 2009]. I was surprised that the photographs no longer stirred emotions that I had experienced previously with other works. It was not because of the book nor the actual photographs some of which I had seen before. After some thought I came to the conclusion that I had become sated and therefore unfeeling towards the images and what they attempted to portray.

Having come to this conclusion I wondered how much farther afield this effect had become. Perhaps this explains why fashions come into and fall out of favour. Fashions by their very nature have to attract a large number of followers so that the market is flooded with images from the same genre. Presumably at some point enough is seen to be enough and there is no longer the response that we had experienced before. We have looked too often. How much more this phenomena must affect judges and assessors and probably leads to the comment "Not another field of poppies" (or Tuscan landscape). Good photographs do not suddenly become bad it is that our emotions are so jaded by over-exposure that we no longer get a good feeling looking at them.

I presume the lesson from this is to follow your own thing and be yourself. At some point in time what you do may become popular and fashionable at which point it is time to try something different.