Egoist or egotist...

One of my readers recently said to me that she felt that my images and Joe Cornish's images had no trace of our ego in them. I was puzzled by this comment so I asked her to expand upon her thesis.

As I understand it (and please let me know if I'm wrong – you know who you are!) she meant that the photographic message wasn't being distorted by our egos; that he and I weren't being vain or showing off, but simply trying to convey our feelings about the subject in hand to a wider audience. And furthermore, that this selfless approach gave our images clarity and veracity.

I'm not at all sure that what I do is selfless, in fact I'm fairly certain that, from my perspective, it's the ultimate selfish act. What I'm trying to do, first and foremost, when I make a photograph is to express my feelings about a subject. I can hope that others may like my work but ultimately I make all my images for me. And what makes me share them with others is another selfish desire.

After the creative urge, one of the deepest desires of an artist is to be praised by one's audience, to be recognised for one's work by one's peers, to be patted on the back – in short, to have one's ego well and truly massaged! This is of course also the reason that we find external criticism of our work so difficult; when someone attacks our work they are attacking our personalities at the deepest level. An artist's images are an expression of their inner self. So saying that an image is rubbish isn't at all the same as saying that you hate the cut of their clothes or even that you hate the colour of their hair. These physical manifestations (even though the latter might have a fundamental genetic link!) are only about surface, mere appearance. You can always change your tailor or buy some hair dye but saying an image is poor is an attack on our ego, the very basis of our being.

John Szarkowzki, the American photographer and former Museum of Modern Art curator, organised an exhibition entitled "Mirrors and Windows" at MoMA in New York in 1978. His premise for the exhibition was that all photographs are either "mirrors" of the photographer's concerns or "windows" onto the world. The first are more likely to be concerned with abstract ideas about the world, to fall into what one might call Art, and the latter concerned with seemingly plain descriptions of the world, to fall into what might be termed Documentary.

I would contend that images cannot simply be one or the other, but rather must be a blend. There is no such thing as a pure documentary photograph. The image is fundamentally linked to reality; it is a partial document of the moment and place at which it was made. But the hand of the photographer when they release the shutter is driven by the mind of the photographer – a notoriously biased influence! Similarly there is no such thing as an image that purely reflects the concerns of the photographer. The audiences' interpretation of an image is derive as much by their viewpoint as by that of the photographer. All photographs cannot help but contain an element of ego and an element of truth.

I would still feel flattered (and nothing appeals more to the ego than flattery!) if my reader felt that I let the subject in any of my images speak more loudly than my own voice. In other words that my style or vision, direct expressions of my personality, were subordinate to the subject. I would feel that I had failed if the photographs screamed "Me, me, me!" to the audience. I want the subject to appear as if one were staring into a limpid pool, to be presented in as pellucid a manner as possible. This might seem contradictory given that I stated right at the beginning that the making of images was a fundamentally selfish occupation for me. But, ironically, photographers are alone in the world of artistic representation in finding that the more transparent their style the greater the reputation they may command as photographers.

Every other visual artist seeks to differentiate their vision from that of others in their field, to proclaim it as unique, by dint of overt stylistic devices; van Gogh's textural application of paint, Rembrandt's glowing depiction of light, Lowry's stick men. But photographers wish to impress upon their audience the fundamental truthfulness of what they have seen. The use of photographic mannerisms, such as obvious filtration or extreme wide angle views, only serve to undermine any claims to veracity. Such mannerisms overtly declare the presence of the photographer when they wish to declare what they have seen as paramount. They want to present their work as a slice of the real world, albeit one that only they were gifted enough to perceive and present to the viewer. The unique voice of the photographer is, necessarily, to be found not only in what they choose to photograph but also in the way that they compose the image.

But the photograph is a trick of the light, a visual sleight of hand. It presents us with the photographer's vision, collapsing all possible viewpoints into their single one, but does it in such a way that we ignore this distillation and adopt their 'real' viewpoint as if it were our own. In this way the photographer almost becomes invisible, it's almost as if in some bizarre way they played no part in the making of the image. Perhaps this is why my reader felt that there was no trace of ego in my images.

The evolutionary theorist Richard Dawkins famously made the claim in the "Selfish Gene" that there's no such thing as altruism, that even a bee that gives its own life to protect the hive is ultimately being selfish. Similarly sharing our view of the world, a product of our ego, isn't being altruistic. If I, as a photographer, can claim not only insight but also veracity for my images then people will think that I'm a better photographer – yet another way for my ego to be massaged. But the ego can be subtle, and in that subtlety others may benefit. Ultimately, it matters not how much a photograph is the product of our ego so long as others can extract some good from viewing it.