I just came across you’re website while looking for photos of my show on-line. I’ve never seen your photos before or read your writing, and was surprised to find your long critique of my contribution to the New York Photo festival.

I’m glad that my exhibition inspired such a ferocious response from you, and I think many of your points are valid and interesting. All the back and forth with yourself about forests and trees and everything and anything got a little jumbled, and I’m not sure I follow you’re insights into Egglestons’ war (call me ‘garden variety’), but overall you bring up some good points. Is authorship incidental? How important is intention? Is your blind photographer friend like an elephant with a paintbrush? Are the photos astonishing because the author is blind, or because they are simply astonishing? Is the beauty then in the seeing eye of the beholder?

The big difference between us is right there. You talk about your blind friends’ astonishing photographs and use their example to further your statement about intention and the photographic act.

But if I knew about these great photographs, I would show them on my website, using the photographs to further my statement about what I think are good photographs, and let the work speak for itself.

You didn’t talk about my website at all. You know that’s where this Various Photographs project comes from right? I’m not a Becher collecting photos of towers, you’re right, but I’m not collecting “everything” as you say. I show about 3% of the photographs and artwork that get submitted to the site. I look at thousands of photographs in consideration for it. It’s not anti-elitist or elitist, it’s selective, based on my opinion and taste. I wouldn’t even really call it democratic, but if you want to use that word it’s ok. The photos in the Various Photographs show were chosen from this archive of images 3 years in the making. Like I said, what I’m trying to do with the site and the show (to quote my own statement) is to create an accessible venue where images can exist and co-exist, to build an expanding abstract narrative, an archive of images. I’m interested in the range of what photographs can do, how far they stretch outside their frames, and how they communicate with one another.

Now to quote you, from your ‘work in progress gallery’ on your site:
“The reason I picked up a camera in the first place was to experience the world and understand it. Later I realized I was primarily investigating my relation to the world and making meaning out of it for me… the process for me is like trying to decipher a language. Characters appear, and then a syntax. What does it mean? The same symbols over and over. A context changes, the symbol remains. A clue.”

Amid all your photographic cliches I can tell what you are trying to say, and I understand. In fact I think we are doing the same thing! It’s all about trying to make sense of things for yourself! And here’s to the hope that other people might see things the same way, or at least understand where you’re coming from. Isn’t that what Eggleston and the Bechers were doing? Isn’t that what everybody’s doing, trying to understand and be understood? Isn’t is all about communication? I just prefer to let the photos do the talking.

And how could you tell they weren’t “photo” people there on saturday? Was it their hats? It must have been awful for you, watching all those “everyday” people enjoying themselves in ignorant bliss. THAT is elitist Robert. And condescending. You assume you know more than them? Can you “see the forest” or whatever? You know what you do when you assume, right Robert?

I’m not claiming to know what the future of photography is (although my favorite answer to that question is ‘3D scratch and sniffs’), and as you noted, I don’t even really see myself as a curator, that word doesn’t really fit what I do. I’m a fan of photography, and I enjoy working with people who’s work I appreciate. It was significant to me that I could not install the work in Various Photographs in a singular line, because I wanted each piece in the show to have equal space and prominence, out of respect for the photos and photographers. Plus, half the job of editing the show was sequencing the work and with a grid I could not affectively do that. It’s not “back-peddling” to mention that, it’s an explanation of the the way the installation ended up.

You say that your reaction to the show was “god, everything has been photographed,” that it makes you “not want to take pictures”. It’s safe to say that that is your own personal problem (too bad, god knows we need more miserable photos of shopping malls… Zing!). How do I know I am right? Because I get dozens of emails everyday from photographers all over the world who have seen my website or been to one of my shows and have been inspired to not only take photos but to share them with me and the rest of the world. And THAT is really the point for me, to keep myself and hopefully others excited about photography.

Sorry it didn’t work for you.

- Tim Barber