Who is your G.O.A.T.

Who is your G.O.A.T. (greatest of all time)? Edward Weston, Ansel Adams, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Joseph Nicephore Niecpe? None of the above or someone less famous? Have you ever thought about it? While I sit and write this I’m not sure about who I would name as my choice of greatest of all time. It is a question I’ve pondered time and again but I haven’t ever really decided. While I’m familiar with the works of many of the famous dead photographers and some that are still around I guess I haven’t really compared them to one another. I’m not really sure I need to compare them to each other or that I would be able to compare them to each other. Then maybe the G.O.A.T. has yet to be recognized.

The reason this comes up to my mind is I am not sure we should limit our thinking, our mind, or our creativity. I’ve seen so many photographers in the past totally dismiss HDR (high dynamic range) photographs, soft focus, or any number of other things just because they decided it wasn’t real photography or not “tack sharp”. Some of this work is bad but some of it is fantastic. Just like a recent poll in a social media group asking if a cellphone camera was a “real camera”. A vast majority of photographers argued a cellphone camera wasn’t a “real camera”. Maybe it was a way for them to justify their spending their money on fancy camera gear or maybe they just hadn’t opened their minds to consider it a possibility.

My whole point with this is that as artists shouldn’t keep our minds open to new concepts, new techniques, new processes, and the possibility that there may not be one greatest photographer of all time but a possibility that there are many greatest of all time.