You're saying if we don't find his work interesting or anything special we don't know what we're talking about and will never be 'discovered'? Many of us don't wish to be for one, also that could be turned to suggest that if you do find anything remarkable about his images maybe you are easily led and can't form an individual opinion for fear of peer mockery
No, I didn't say that at all. The point I was making is that some photographers have learnt to 'see' what the rest of us can't, and some of them take their photography to a different level because of that.
I suggest that these days almost any intelligent fool can learn how to operate a camera and how to 'classically' compose a photograph; and a good-quality modern digital camera will turn out a technically acceptable photograph time after time. So the 'hit rate' for great photographs these days should be phenomenal, shouldn't it?
What actually results from that? Millions of record shots and replicas of cliched subjects, especially where landscape photography is concerned! How many times have we browsed through some amateur landscape photos and thought "That's a good looking shot" but have still felt underwhelmed (but perhaps not sure why we felt like that), and then seen its virtual identical twin posted by someone else a day or so later, and realised why. In my opinion, the truth of the matter is that landscape photography has been done to death following the same 'rules', to the extent that it probably now qualifies for zombie status! Perhaps UNESCO should start a list of such zombie landscape scenes?
This is perhaps why the work of Jem Southam is critically acclaimed... it's something different, as he appears to 'see' in a different way from most other shutter button pressers: If out on a mission to take a landscape photo, would the average landscape photographer have seen a raft of carrots or a piece of orange stuck in a blackthorn bush and thought to make that their main subject? I very much doubt it, they'd have probably chunnered to themselves about litter louts or tutted about an object that was in the way of the view they wanted to capture and moaned about having to clone it out!
I'm not saying I personally really like Jem's work; I wouldn't rush out and buy one of his photos to put on my wall (but then again, I don't have
any photos on my walls, not even my own, and they're free!). However, I can see why his work is critically acclaimed, probably it's because it's not the same old replicated 'chocolate box lid' material that thousands of other camera operators are churning out every single year.
So if you don't 'get' it or like it then fine, it's not a crime to have personal preferences or to express them, but I believe they should remain in context as personal opinion, and not be stated as though that opinion were fact.