Criticizing Photographs

While this writing didn’t have any earth-shattering revelations or surprises, I still found it to be a very helpful instruction on how to criticize photographs. It started out with important distinctions about factual description versus interpretation/judgement. Additionally, these aspects may be mixed through the writing, or even within a sentence. This writing mentioned the importance of covering aspects that the reader will not see or experience. For example, an online reader will probably never see the image real-size, or in the intended lighting, or in the exhibition ambiance; or a newspaper reader may never see the image at all.

One thing that was wonderful in this writing was the use of famous photography criticisms as examples. Instructions of the form, “description is this, analysis is that, do these things, … ” is moderately useful, however tying it to examples emphasizes certain real-life aspects. Davis’s criticism of Avedon’s work was length-constrained. His readers only got to see a few pictures. The readers may have little or no background with the artist, or the usual context of these exhibitions. Finally, the readers may be disinterested or disengaged. All of these real-life considerations would have been difficult to bring up meaningfully in an explanatory way, however bringing them up through use of examples was wonderful.