I see lots of pictures put up on web sites attended by questions like "Are these good or what?" Do the seekers of critiques know how formal criticism of photography, and indeed art, actually works?
It's been twenty years since I used to write critiques, reviews, commentaries, cultural analyses, and outright polemics on photography. I'm not going back to it because actually making photographs has become much more fulfilling. But I have some original notes and working patterns that Charlotte Thompson and maybe other viewers might find interesting, challenging, or objectionable. Who knows?
1. The success of a photograph does not depend on what it is of or what it looks like. One would like to think the photographer has chosen the subject matter appropriately and made the photograph so it has come out exactly how they want. The purpose of critical review is to discover the detail of this.
2. Pictures from beginners, experimenters, students, or dilettantes should not be reviewed. A photographer unwilling to personally commit themselves to the worth of their photograph should not expect a reviewer to go to the personal effort of a critical response.
3. What is being critiqued? Is it a photograph; what medium, what size? Or is it an illustration of an actual photograph being displayed on a monitor? Or is it just a display of an electronic file? A bare picture of unknown substance is a shallow thing to critique.
4. Does the picture presenter offer themselves as an artist. If so, the stakes are high, the critique is severe, success is meritorious, failure is abysmal.
5. Does the picture show an affection for the photographic medium or a struggle against it? Trivial examples include positively accepting real grain as inherently photographic or conversely rushing to bleach or hand colouring because straight photography does not deliver. Hand work on photographs might be simultaneously successful art and photographic failure.
6. Is the photograph illustrative rather than being a conscious art object? Quite a bit of photography is concerned with recording the surface appearance of art executed in other media.
7. Is the photograph a plain one showing a "good" subject or a "good" photograph showing a plain subject? Good subjects do not guarantee good photographs. Ugly photographs of beautiful faces, beautiful photographs of ugly faces are both common tropes to attract attention.
8. Looking at a photograph can uncover evidence of the picture maker's thought process. For example:
Is there a projection of a mood?
Is the photographer making an Equivalent (Stieglitz style) of a spiritual experience?
Is making the photograph therapy for a troubled mind?
Maybe the photograph is a journey into enlightenment...photographic Zen.
Perhaps the photograph is evidence for irrational obsession...a photogeist.
Does the photographer celebrate beauty for its own sake?
Is the photograph intended for activism, propaganda, or social engineering?
Is the photographer an egotist seeking acclaim from a duped audience?
Does the photograph serve to memorialise a worthy idea?
9. Does the photograph incorporate enigmatic elements? If so, is this because the photographer wants to give the spectator's imagination scope for free play in the picture space? Or is it because the photograph is not fully thought through by the maker?
10. Is the photograph about the photographer; a biography in pictorial form?
11. Should the photograph be praised for technical competence or is this to be assumed as a basic minimum standard for any picture shown in public? Is technical virtuosity relevant in an art context? Is the photograph just a certificate that a praiseworthy conceptual journey has been taken?
12. Spectators give up a little bit of their lives, time that they do not get over, to look at photographs. Does the photographer, via their photograph, acknowledge an obligation to the viewer for calling attention to themselves and their work? Or is it all about the picture maker and the audience can shift for themselves as best they can?
13. In the end, does the photograph create something new? Does it open doors of perception previously closed? Is it a well-spring of new appreciations or new vision? In the very old world of visual art an evocative idea is most precious and worth sincere praise.
Anyway, that is the sort of interrogation I used to give a photograph or a photographer (hopefully both) before writing a critical article. It would have been a privilege years ago to do the same with Charlotte Thompson's "The Desire of Life" pictures at the front of this thread but my commitment to this process is over.
I though I would post this screed in an attempt to show that there is lot lot more to be wrung from a photograph than merely what it looks like under casual inspection.
