Barrett, Criticizing Photographs, Ch 2: Describing Photographs, 3rd ed, 2000

Description is data gathering.  It answers questions such as, What is here?  What am I looking at?  What do I know about what I am seeing?  Descriptive statements are verifiable, and come from two sources - internal (reflected in the work itself) or external (about the artist, the process, the context).  Barrett then goes through several reviews of Avedon’s In the American West to demonstrate the kinds of description on which critics tend to focus.  He enumerates four categories:  subject matter, form, medium, and style.  

Road sign colors

As a result of recent exercises, I've spent the last couple of weeks sharpening my awareness of colors.  As I was about in the city, I ran through the mantra of color combinations (redgreen blueorange violetyellow) to keep myself focused on color (where typically I am more aware of form).

One of the images I captured for my exercise made me consider - why are highway signs blue? I googled a bit and found regional and country-specific standards.  It seems in Europe and the US, highway directional signs are green, but in Europe non-highway (or on-motorway) signs may be green though in several countries they are blue. Besides the color scheme, there are also standards for shapes.  Triangles and diamonds, for example, typically carry warnings.

How were these decisions made?  Was there any research done to suggest certain colors or shapes are related to particular modes of discourse or states of mind?  The lack of uniformity across countries suggests the system grew organically and only later as drivers began motoring in other countries was some kind of uniformity required.

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Exercise 24: Color Relationships

Exploration of color continues in this exercise calling for images demonstrating the following color relationships in the following ratios.

Red-Green 1:1
Orange-Blue  1:2
Yellow-Violet 1:3

Barrett, Criticizing Photographs, Ch 1: About Art Criticism, 3rd ed, 2000

Criticism, Barrett says, is more than just expressing like or dislike.  He cites the work of American aesthetician Morris Weitz, who read several centuries worth of Hamlet criticism and discovered writers doing at least one of four things, sometimes all:  describing, interpreting, evaluating, and theorizing.  Criticism can be any one of these things in isolation, or any combination, and Weitz found many writers criticizing without judging.  Art historian Edmund Feldman felt evaluating (or judging) is one of the least important functions of criticism.  Criticism, as Barrett defines it, is informed discourse about art to increase understanding and appreciation of art. It should result in what philosopher Harry Broudy calls “enlightened cherishing,”  a sympathetic understanding of the art object and the aesthetic experience.  

Further classification schemes include academic Ralph Alexander Smith’s, in which critics engage in exploratory or argumentative aesthetic criticism.  The former relies largely on description and interpretation, seeking to communicate to the reader the critic’s aesthetic experience.  The critic may then engage in the latter, judging the work on how well it meets or fulfills specified aesthetic criteria.  NY Times photography critic Andy Gundberg suggests another model, in which criticism can be applied or theoretical, the former being more utilitarian and journalistic, the latter aesthetic and academic.

Clarke, The Photograph, Chapter 7: The Body in Photography, 1997

 Muybridge - Woman turning in surprise, running away

Where the portrait is ambiguous, Clarke finds the nude contentious.  This is, he says, because much of the way bodies are viewed is based on social construct.  This doesn't seem to say very much since very little of what we view or know is not understood through social construct.  His point seems to be that ideas of sexuality, identity and gender influence how nude bodies are photographically portrayed. 

You are not a photographer

These days everyone has a camera and post-processing software.  This has encouraged some to think they have all the tools required to launch a photography business.  Hilarious results are collected at You Are Not a Photographer.  While anyone who aspires to be a professional has to go through a period of producing poor images, they must be prepared, when claiming to be professional, to compare their skills and products with those already established as such.  Taking a shot at them here doesn't seem at all unfair.

Exercise 23: Primary and Secondary Colors

This exercise is going to take a few days.

I went out this afternoon with the intention of shooting the whole thing in one go - six subjects (three primary and three secondary colors) of three exposures each.  Ha.

Review: Clarke, The Photograph, Chapter 6: The Portrait in Photography, 1997

Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson (Scottish, 19th century) -
James Linton, Newhaven Fisherman - 1840–50

Clarke begins his chapter on portraiture with the claim that is it “one of the most problematic areas of photographic practice, … fraught with ambiguity.”  He notes that portraiture was in its early days encoded in the 19^th century practice of oil painting.  This was a highly privileged medium available to only the wealthy and was used as a means of projecting power and status.  He sees the daguerreotype as the perfect portrait medium as it required, like painting, subjects to sit for long periods (relative to photography, that is) and produced a one-of-a-kind original.  

Exercise 21: Control the Strength of a Color

At long last I begin Part Three: Colour.  Or as I grew up writing it, Color.  The first exercise is intended to demonstrate how exposure affects color.  Washed-out color results from overexposure, deeper color from underexposure.

Holiday snaps workflow

I shot just over 1000 images in 10 days in Israel and Jordan.  Actually nine, as I spent the last day in bed sick and never touched my camera.

It probably took as long to sort and edit these photos as it did to shoot them.  I should have kept better track, but I'll have to do now with a rough estimate.

Happy New Year

Here's the evidence that I have been away:

This past week I started sifting through the 1000+ images from our trip and hopefully before the beginning of next week I'll have a few posted to No Realities.  Shooting on this holiday seemed different than previous vacations.  I was more self-aware.  It was perhaps also one of the more frustrating shooting holidays for not having the time to linger and play with the camera.  I was on auto most days and occasions shooting almost literally from the hip.  I wished I had a pocket camera instead of the bulky DSLR.

Besides the trip, my other excuses for not posting here recently are finishing a 4000-word essay for my Buddhist Studies class (still in progress, though the first draft is now done), a 1000-word book review for the same (submitted) and another 1000-word review for Buddhist Art News (first draft done).  Hope to get cracking on exercises for Part 3 by this weekend and to finish this course by before the start of summer vacation.

Let's see what happens.

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