Juicy Melons

It was my birthday last week, nothing special about that. I'll assume the card is in the post. One of the cards I received was of David McEnerey's photograph 'Juicy Melons', a saucy 'post-cardesque' photo of a melon seller (is there or has there ever been such a thing?) posing suggestively with a pair of his finest wares while a young, well-endowed lady walks past him. I know it's probably not very correct politically, but sod it parliament has been dissolved anyway. The reason I'm compelled to write about this image is that I've been reading plenty of Journals, magazines, weblogs and mental jottings of phsycos about photography of late and the one thing this image made me ask was 'where's the humor?' I love photography and at it's best it holds a mirror up to life as a whole, which is my point: there's humor in life so why isn't there much humor in photography?

As with film, I suppose the reasoning would be there isn't much reward for such a hard task. When did a comedy last win the Best Film Oscar? Creating something funny in a single image is even tougher. You must create a narrative, set-up and punch-line in a single frame, and there isn't much by way of kudos in the end product.

David McEnery died in 2002 and was hailed by his peers as "The World's Funniest Photographers" but I some how doubt there will ever be a retrospective at the Tate.