John, that one sentence has more syllables than I can cram into a paragraph.(posted 8203 days ago)I guess the question here is what constitutes "timeless"? Is it that the modern world disappears? Or that there are "universal" themes that transcend their time? The question seems to imply both - that something just "stays in the mind" but also the shots "don't date themselves." These are two different things.
I often strive to eliminate things that tie photographs to a specific time, quite intentionally. For example, I almost never have cars in photographs. I avoid landmarks. I do look for things that are almost out of place, anachronisms, because it dislocates them in time. On the other hand, many of the people I show could only be from the present, yet the setting is not defined to be in the present.
On the other hand, if it is about truly timeless themes, well then we are talking about the ability to transcend the objects in the photograph and move to some other plane. That's a lot tougher, I'd love to think I could do it by just excluding signs of the modern world, but I don't really believe it.