Photographing The Human Condition

The Concerned Photographer
For the concerned photographer there is an important distinction between subject, genre and theme that needs to be understood. The subject of your photograph might be a stream, face or building; the genre landscape, portrait or architecture; and the theme purity, fragility or the power of empire.
The subject of the above image is an elderly gentleman in a village near Chennai (Madras) in southeast India. The photo fits the portrait genre, but what theme is being explored? Actually I think its important to make a clear distinction as to what a photo is about, from the photographer's point of view, compared to how that same image can be read by a potentially large and diverse audience. We are all unique individuals existing within a range of societies across the surface of planet earth. There are many reasons why a photo can be read or interpreted differently to the way it was originally envisaged by the photographer. Here are some examples:
* Age
* Gender
* ...