Is that an old school idea? That depends what you think the purpose of a photograph is. Is a photograph art? A document? a moment of history captured in silver?
My wife thinks a photo should have a person in it - why else would I take it? She tolerates my constant stopping to take a photograph of a
thing!! (My wife is who she is - and I can respond if I need to by asking why she writes fiction - she is published. Of course I'd be on firmer ground if I ever sold a print).
Sometimes it helps to try to understand WHY someone would have such an opinion - what is the history and where did it come from? Then at least we can rationally present an argument for consideration.
I once had a conversation with my mother-in-law, an accomplished watercolor artist descended of a recognized American Impressionist painter, but very old-school
on this topic.
She said at one time some people thought a picture that didn't commemorate a person, or an event at which a person was present, was wasteful - they thought of a picture as a document. She also said that photographers had to earn a living and people paid for pictures of themselves, and unless there was a commercial outlet, few other images were taken. People thought of photography as commercial and painting as artistic.
Think of 19th C. and early 20th C. photographers - so many of them were portraitists, and wealthy people had their portraits done in photos, just as they had them done in oils. My wife has a stunning 1910 Bachrach studio portrait of her grandmother hanging in her study.
It IS ART!!
Over time, the commercial reality of the photography business, coupled with the artistic instinct of the best portraitists, led to the cultural belief that
ARTISTIC (GOOD) photographs had to have persons in them.
Without a person, a photograph would likely have had no commercial outlet except to support sensationalist journalism.
Matthew Brady was truly a pioneer using the camera to document the Civil War ACTION, not just the people. He sold to Eastern news distributors.
William Henry Jackson was a pioneer documenting 19th C. railroads - but he was in the employ of the railroads. His work illustrated pamphlets in the east that the railroads used to encourage people to come west.
Ansel Adams is the given pioneer of using photographic images as art pieces for the sake of the art; using the printed image as an artistic medium. This concept was every bit as novel in its time as the first French Impressionists were in theirs.
Who bought Adams' work? Who bought Monet's? Who bought John Singer Sargent's?
Who buys yours?
Is National Geographic an art magazine (to me it is) - but art requires philanthropy if there is not a commercial outlet for its product.
My mother-in-law told me that her father, a well-to-do and educated businessman (but flinty, Presbyterian New-Englander), saw and even appreciated the
art in Ansel Adams' work, but was dismissive of its
value.
Of course today we believe differently. So what makes a good photograph?
A good photograph is a combination of subject, composition, light, grayscales or color and the technical talent of its maker, the photographer. It needn't have commercial value, but it probably would to someone.
And it most certainly needn't have a person in it to be considered a good photograph.
My conclusion is that the question should be asked of all art, not just photographs. It is a metaphysical question that has been asked by artists since the dawn of man's time - see the Kipling quotation in my signature - the question is,
What makes good ART?