I think that each time a maker makes or a critic critiques they must adopt an arbitrary set of rules to follow and break and I think it is often a different set of rules that must be adopted and I think any attempt to enshrine these rules beyond their temporary adoption is folly.
My rules for the time being:
Fuck punctuation
Traditionally, the photographer worships photographing, the painter painting, the writer writing... But they're wrong. It's not mastery of the medium. If you want the rawest, most emotionally present, most earnest expression you can manage, you abandon your subject and you abandon your medium. You approach it as a beginner, when all you can do is try. Because your subject and your medium are studied and prepared and and trained whether you intend it or not. This is a lesson of modernism.
Unfortunately, this is also a trick you can only use a limited number of times, as there are only so many things you will find yourself sufficiently creative with. There's an unlimited number of things, but only a limited amount of you.
That is not to say that earnest expression is the only means of producing art of value. Or that art necessarily has value. Or that it doesn't.
...To be honest, I often find myself wondering whether I've said anything at all.
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