The eye of the beholder?

In my previous blog, my observations about Harry Goodwin’s prints at the V&A made me think back to the rock photos I had taken 25 years ago. So I scanned some of my old prints and put them on a Flickr account.

Then I found some negatives I’d taken in 1984 of The Smiths at Glastonbury and scanned them into my computer. At the time I took them, I hadn’t even printed most of them but I posted some of the results on Flickr, alongside my old prints.

My previous posts had got a few hits per day but just one of the new shots, of Morrissey and Johnny Marr together, got 1,500 hits in about 24 hours. You can see it below.

It got me wondering. OK, it’s a perfectly good photo and yes, I was in the right place and yes, my experience and instinct helped me choose the right moment to press the shutter, but I realised that its popularity had more to do with who I’d photographed and little to do with any art in the image itself – precisely my comment about the V&A exhibition. I also find it interesting that the photo I am most proud of has had just nine hits. It’s of Hugh Masekela who’s brilliant, but less well known.

The whole thing also gave me a first-hand experience of how the Internet has changed the way information is disseminated. In the past, most of my pictures would only appear in print in Venue, Bristol’s what’s-on magazine. Some might appear nationally in the NME but that was often months later. Now you post an image and within a day it’s all round the world.

Of course none of that is news to anyone but actually seeing it unfold is very different to merely knowing it’s a fact. Watching the ‘Views’ on Flickr clock up in real time, realising that at that moment you’re reaching people all over the world and better still, getting their response too. I found it pretty thrilling. How often does someone say something as heart-felt to you as “Just when I thought every Smiths-era photo that was ever going to be unearthed was floating around cyberspace, photographer Paul Norris uploads a handful of gorgeous pictures from Glastonbury 1984 to his Flickr account. Paul, I thank you with all of my heart…”?

Which neatly takes me back what I was saying about Harry Goodwin’s exhibition at the V&A. In the comments book, people wrote about how much they enjoyed it, while I was left unmoved. Of course beauty’s in the eye of the beholder – it’s precisely where it belongs.

Johnny Marr and Morrissey from The Smiths, Glastonbury 1984