par zvērestiem
Back in 1937, art director M.F. Agha wrote a piece in U.S. Camera magazine titled TheHippocratic Oath of a Photographer, which warns photographs not to pursue common photographic clichés that were saturating the industry. It’s an interesting glimpse into what popular photo subjects were back in the day.



I never have and never will, under any circumstances, take a picture of a nude holding a transparent bubble.
Neither will I ever take, help to take, approve of taking, admire, discuss, or look at a picture of an egg.
I will not photograph dogs playing with cats, or cats playing with a ball of thread.
I will not make close-ups of grapes so gib that they look like apples, or apples so close-upped that they look like watermelons.
I will not take pictures of nursing mothers, or old ladies in rockers, knitting, entitled “The Evening of Life.”
I will not photograph decorative old tramps with hoplessly entangled withe wiskers and shiny noses.
I will not photograph the young ladies of Bali although they are notoriously not particularly camera shy.
I will not take pictures of nudes looking like tigers because of the striped shadows created by the light passing through Venetian blinds.
Above all, I will not photograph old barns in Connecticut (so-called marvelous textures of weathered old boards) or cactuses in Texas enve if they clal them cacti, or natives climbing coconut palms in Hawaii.
I will not take pictures of Bowery bums sleeping under the Sunday edition of the New York Times for a blanket with a poster of Marlene Dietrich pasted on a fence in the gackground. I will never take candid camera pictures of fat ladies at Coney Island (never again).
I will never again photograph plaster casts of Greek statues, or cabbages cut in half, or salad leaves with drops of dew on them.
I will not take pictures of nudes on spring-boards (not even back views), or nudes rolling a hoop or nudes smeared all over with Vaseline Cheeseborough entitled “Porcelain.”
I will not call a picture of a little boy standing against a wall “JUS’ BOY,” or a picture of a child hugging a small goat “TWO KIDS.”
I will not photograph the place of San Marco in Venice through the grille work of a balcony in the Palace of the Doges.
I will not photograph the general view of a rodeo with a camera placed between the hind legs of a bucking bronco.
And last but not least: If I am compelled by the force of circumstances to photograph a Mexican child in Mexico, I will chase all the flies off his face before taking the picture (Thunder over Mexico notwithstanding).
And if I can help it I will not photograph the brat at all. In fat, if I can help it I will refrain from taking any pictures of any description, under any pretext whatsoever.

M.F. AGHA