Barrett, Criticizing Photographs, Ch 4: Types of Photographs, 3rd ed, 2000

Bill Owens Suburbia

This is Barrett’s most ambitious chapter yet as he does more than review the ideas of others, but sets out his own classification scheme.  Before doing that, he reviews some of the systems that have come before, noting from the very beginning of photography a process distinction between science and art.  This is reflected in arguments about how photographs are made:  pictorialist or purist (manipulated or straight)  He notes a number of categorization schemes to suggest how such systems develop and change over time as new photography methods, subjects, and concerns emerge, develop, and decline.  

Barrett’s system features six categories:

1. descriptive
2. explanatory
3. interpretive
4. ethically evaluative
5. aesthetically evaluative
6. theoretical

He notes that the categories are intended to describe photographs, not photographers, as photographers may produce many different types of images over the course of a career.  The categories are themselves interpretive.  They are presented as a means to think about images and encourage debate and discussion.  Any one photograph may be representative of more than one category.  The responsibility of the viewer is to determine what each image does most, or what it does best.  

Descriptive  Some photos are never meant to be anything more than descriptive, such as passport photos, medical images, or pictures from NASA satellites.    They are “interpretively and evaluatively neutral.”  

Explanatory  Barrett admits to a small difference with descriptive, giving an example comparing the passport photo with the work of Muybridge or Marey’s studies in locomotion.  One difference that suggests itself is the volume of work - Muybridge and Marey produced thousands of images - but on consideration we can also recognize that the passport photographer may have produced an equally vast number of photos limited to a specific theme or subject.  Barrett also considers the work of visual sociologists or anthropologists as explanatory photography, citing Edward Curtis’ 2000+ images of Native Americans, or James Van Der Zee’s work in 1920-30’s Harlem.  What seems to set these apart from descriptive photos, and in fact what seems to be the defining feature of Barrett’s scheme, is intention.  The passport photo has a more restricted intention than a collection of thousands of images. Barrett sees most news photography as explanatory and notes that explanatory photography besides being particular to time and place should offer as well verifiable visual evidence.  

Interpretive  Barrett begins with another comparison, this time between the scientific report (explanatory) and poetry.  Interpretive photography, he says, is revelatory of the photographer’s worldview, is exploratory rather than logical, dramatic rather than subtle, and generally concerned with formal excellence (I almost read “elegance”) and fine reproduction quality.   Interpretive photography relies on the photographer creating scenes and directing subjects, where explanatory photography relies on decisive moments.  Photographs of this type are typically ambiguous and open to a variety of readings.  

Ethically Evaluative  Such photographs may describe but are intended to make ethical judgements.  They are typically politically engaged and passionate.  

Aesthetically Evaluative  This category is what is more typically known as art photography.  The most common subjects are landscape, nude, and still life, though these may also be the subjects of other types of photos.  That is, not all landscapes fit within the category of aesthetically evaluative.  Nudes are often nameless and faceless and are taken as studies of form.  Of the landscape, Szarkowski writes they are characterized by “a love for the eloquently perfect print, an intense sensitivity to the mystical content of the natural landscape, a belief in the existence of a universal formal language, and a minimal interest in man as a social animal.”  Still lives are carefully selected and arranged for aesthetic effect.  In addition, much street photography fits within this category, including work by Winograd, Cartier-Bresson, and Friedlander.  Mark Johnstone writes about Misrach’s desert photography, though it could apply to other aesthetically evaluative subjects as well, that “while they tell us something about the place, these pictures are also about what it means to transform experiences of the world into photographs.”

Theoretical  These are photographs about photography, about art, the politics of art, and modes of expression. Many photographs are concerned not only with the art of photography, but wider philosophical issues regarding expression of the aesthetic.

On review, it seems Barrett’s scheme is based on intention - what does the photographer hope to produce?  While a photographer could unintentionally produce an image in any one of these categories, it would seem to be outside the bounds of probability to produce a set of images, or years worth of images, that fall completely outside the photographer's intention.  

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