So what exactly is a good photograph?

Sitting here today, asking myself, what the hell is a good photograph. Is it purely an aesthetic consideration or is a more emotional relationship with an image? Is good even the right term for describing an image, is effective, emotive or challenging better qualities for an image, or are they all bound up in what we believe a good images to be.

I don't think i can really answer a question such as this, since i'm not sure if i would know a good photograph if one was to run me off the run and reverse over me. I suppose obviously its a subjective thing, people have different tastes, culture baggage etc. etc. but what is it about an image that produces a effect people describe it in terms of being good or bad.

Is an images good quality to be found in its theme, its subject matter? Can we assume that a certain subject is bound to produce a good photograph, or a certain style or effect will produce the desired effect. Can a good photograph be something that raises issues and opens up a hot subject ie. migrants, multi-nationalism or is it not confined to the object we place in front of the lens. Is it how a photographs makes us see rather than what we see that creates a sense of a good photograph. If we are shown a new way of seeing, or a new vision are we to assume that this is then a good photograph.

Of course the idea of what a good photograph isn't fenced into the notion of the arts, a good photograph can be of a loved one, or an event one attended and evokes memories. A good photograph can be an accident of shutter releasing and over exposing a negative. A good photograph can be constructed entirely from component parts of multiple images.

i may not have slept in about 36 hours, so then this could be the incoherent ramblings of a very tired student of photography. But i just think the idea of a good photograph is unnecessary in terms of a photograph, not merely because of subjectivity but because a good photograph is as interesting, provoking and important as a bad photograph. In another way i suppose i'm saying that imagery can't and shouldn't be judged in terms of good or bad, like or dislike, but the relationships it paints, the connections it makes, between people.