Thank goodness for some slight confusion.

There is a simplicity about a popular and respected photograph. There is rarely any confusion about what the image wants to tell us. And that gets a bit boring. I've been doing a lot of straightforward images recently and it is taking a toll. A photograph should be able to do a lot more.

There should be more to keep our brains busy. On that topic, is it possible for a photograph to have mystery?

I went looking to see what Picasso was painting in 1919. It's quite a mix. He had been developing the practices of Cubism for fifteen years by this time and had built up quite a stock of techniques for representing things. But he was tiring of it too. He was happier putting colour back and some establishment tricks of pictorial representation. Maybe he was happier in life too, with money less of an issue and some degree of success and respect. I found one that this photo reminds me of, in respect of the shutters to left and right that block in the array of studied objects in the middle as well as the tapering base forms below, with a still life of buildings above. Obviously I'm not saying they are comparable in achievment. I only want to make the point that perhaps we've reached a moment in history that we can attempt the same in photography that they did in painting over a century ago. We can explode the image and put it back together again. Find a new language for it. Aren't you bored with the safety of photographic images? Yes, the same can be said of this one above. It's safe too. I'm no Picasso. We can do a lot better. What's the Paul Simon song about Frank Lloyd Wright say? "When I run dry I stop a while and think of you." I should write one about Pablo Ruiz Picasso. "When I'm bored with the mind numbingly traditional image of a nicely balanced rectangle of pretty things I wonder what you would have done with it, baby."

We need a Picasso of photography. There hasn't been one yet. (Hockney has done a lot in certain ways but he has a day job). It won't be me. Needs someone fearless with a vision...