Criticizing Photographs, Chapter 1: About Art Criticism, Barrett
In a book claiming to teach about criticizing photographs, first it is necessary to define art criticism. Barrett makes a clear distinction between the common use of criticizing, usually the act of making negative judgments, and an analytical critical process about a work of art. Barrett refers to Morris Weitz who determined that there are four main aspects of critique: describing, interpreting, evaluating, and theorizing. Admitting that critics may do one or all of these aspects in a single critique, Barrett alludes to the complexity of what art critics actually do. Settling on a broad definition, Barrett sees criticism as an informed discourse about a work aimed at augmenting understanding and appreciation for art. Moving on, Barrett outlines some main sources of criticism such as art magazines, newsmagazines, and newspapers (ex, Artforum, Aperture, Exposure, Newsweek, New York Times). Using many examples and quotes, Barrett explains that there is a variety of paths to become a critic. Even when finally considered an “art critic” there is a variety of positions on why and how to conduct art criticism. Ending with arguments for the value of criticism, Barrett holds up ideals of increased knowledge and a healthy appreciation for art. Personally, I love when he writes, “Critics… have a responsibility to struggle with meaning.” This self- and societal-imposed responsibility to grapple with the subjective and malleable themes of art, and in turn life, seems at once frivolous and crucial.
Criticizing Photographs, Chapter 2: Describing Photographs: What Do I See?, Barrett
We have been describing what we see since we began talking. But when it comes to description entwined with an art critique, every sentence must be carefully crafted and thought out. Barrett make’s use of Douglas Davis’s 1985 Newsweek critique of Avedon’s “In the American West” throughout the chapter as a vivid illustration of the importance of description. To further emphasize his point, Barrett chooses not to include copies of the photographs Davis discusses. Instead, Barrett forces the reader to imagine the works, as any other reader would in 1985. Of course, in the age of the internet and being a very visual person, it was difficult to restrain from looking up the images before finishing the chapter. In the end, I did look up the photographs in the discussion and was interested to realize that I received much more detailed and descriptive information from reading about the work than by looking at it myself.
Barrett outlines four main aspects of a photograph that a critic may describe: subject matter, form, medium, and style. Using examples of Tunick’s “Nude Adrift” and self-portraits by Cindy Sherman, Barrett differentiates between the subject matter and the subject. The first is what objects are actually being photographed; the latter refers to the meaning or theme behind a photograph. Form is identified as how the subject is presented, including elements of light, color, and texture. Medium refers to the material and creation process of the art object itself. Finally, style speaks to a similarity to an artist, movement, time period, or geographic location. Barrett also describes style as the various choices a photographer makes to craft his final image, including use of the medium, the formal arrangement, and selection of subjects. Admitting that referring to style can be more interpretive than descriptive, Barrett points out that few critics write unbiased descriptions, but weave their description and analysis.
Notes on a Centennial, Bernard DeVoto
Appearing in Harpers in 1938, DeVoto’s piece on the centennial of photography seems as modern and relevant now as it was 72 years ago. It still holds true, that the common person cannot describe how a photograph is created within his camera. Photography is made even more ubiquitous and confusing with the introduction of inexpensive digital cameras. While DeVoto begins and ends his piece with the simultaneous banality and mystery of photography, in the middle he takes the reader on a journey through the history of photography. Beginning with Daguerre, DeVoto notes that the early photographers had to be an enthusiast as well as a skilled craftsman and a laboratory technician, even an athlete. Tracing the evolution of technology as well as popularity of photography, DeVoto shows how it transforms form a science to a hobby. Not only does the common photographer remain unaware of the process behind the camera, but he or she is also blind to the effect photography has had on various aspects of society and life. From microscopes, to x-rays, automobiles, and breakfast cereal, DeVoto beautiful points out that photography “has become so completely interwove in the fabric of modern life that its effects are not only indescribable but incalculable.” Shocked at the advances photography had made in one-hundred years, DeVoto would be speechless at the new inventions since. With the omnipresence of surveillance cameras, advertisements, and computers, the contributions photography has made to the process of life as we know it is truly immeasurable.
Sexual Personae: The Cancelled Preface, Camille Paglia
A perceptive, detailed, and creative writer, Camille Paglia delves into the personal, the masks we all wear, and the roles we all play. Drawing from literature, philosophy, and culture, both classical and modern, Paglia explains the sexual personae. Almost rejecting claims of nurture influence, Paglia cites biology as an important source in self-identification. Paglia echoes ideas of Social Darwinism and Social Functionalists in her emphasis of a hierarchical order to society. Focusing on genetic and hormonal differences between men and women, Paglia comes to the terms of masculine and feminine. She does admit that these terms are not necessarily bounded to man and woman respectively, and are not necessarily exclusive. However, she does paint some bold statements about men and women. Paglia states, “Biologically, the male is impelled toward restless movement; his moral danger is brutishness. Biologically, the female is impelled toward waiting, expectancy: her moral danger is stasis…. Man is contoured for invasion, while woman remains the hidden, a cave of archaic darkness. No legislation or grievance committee can change these eternal facts.” Although Paglia argues for the positive aspects in Freud’s writings (which understand and respect), I will have to say some of her comments are too Freudian for me (Freudian used in the negative connotation she fights against). At one point, she almost states that women are biologically not capable of achieving the heights of men. This entire section was difficult for me to swallow, but overall I found her piece interesting to read and intriguing to think about.
Criticizing Photographs, Chapter 3: Interpreting Photographs, Barrett
Building off of his two previous chapters, Barrett moves forward with the interpretation of photographs. He begins with an example written by Susan Sontag about Jeff Wall’s Dead Troops Talk. Including the original piece, Barrett then recaps and explains the strengths of Sontag’s interpretation. An important part of Barrett’s chapter is his rejection of the “innocent eye”. He writes, “People’s knowledge, beliefs, values, and attitudes- heavily influenced by their culture- are reflected in the photographs they take.” I would take his argument even further and say that the details a critic notices and draws the reader’s attention to, along with his interpretation, are a reflection of their experiences and position within society. Although towards the end of the chapter Barrett distinguishes between interpretive meaning and personal significance, I believe personal experience highly influence the interpretive perspective critics choose to take.
Barrett outlines various interpretive perspectives almost giving up coming critics a playbook to follow with formulaic views and positions to take. These perspectives listed by Barrett include: comparative, archetypal, feminist, psychoanalytic, formalist, semiotic, Marxist, stylistic, biographical, intentionalist, and technique based. Barrett includes that critics will likely use a hybrid of these perspectives in order to address multiple aspects of a photograph. The use of one of these perspectives over another doesn’t constitute as a “right” or “wrong” choice. Barrett puts forth that no interpretation is true or false, but should be evaluated instead as plausible, enlightening, or original. Finally, Barrett addresses what he calls “the intentional fallacy”. This is when a critic evaluates a photograph based on the success or failure of achieving what the artist intended to portray in his work. Quoting Minor White, “photographers frequently photograph better than they know.” Interpreting a work of art only as the artist intended or wanted limits the work and doesn’t take into consideration any subconscious or unintended meanings. Barrett ends his chapter with a reminder that art interpretation is a constant discussion, one that is self-reflexive and self-corrective. Viable interpretations of works only add to a vibrant discussion on life and art itself.
Criticizing Photographs, Chapter 4: Types of Photographs, Barrett
To simplify, understand and analyze, we categorize photographs into distinct labels as we do with everything in life. There are various ways this can be achieved, none of them necessarily right or wrong, but each shed light on differing aspects of a work of art. Before delving into his own categorizations Barrett takes a look at categories by Beaumont Newhall and John Szarkowski. While Newhall’s labels focus on stylistic trends (straight, formalistic, documentary, and equivalent), Szarkowski’s focuses on the subject and subject matter of a photograph, examining a continuum between “mirrors and windows.” Reflecting a romantic and realist tradition respectively, “mirrors” tell the viewer more about the artists, as “windows” give insight to the world. I find this analogy extremely poetic, also quite fitting to our class set up; beginning the semester with mirrors, and ending it with windows.
The new categories Barrett lists are based on how photographs are made to function. These categories include: descriptive, explanatory, interpretive, ethically evaluative, aesthetically evaluative, and theoretical. Descriptive photographs generally include photos taken for identification purposes, such as x-rays, ID photos and surveillance photographs. Explanatory photographs take a step beyond describing and attempt to explain. Perhaps one of the most well known is the photographs taken by Muybridge of a running horse used to determine whether all four horse hooves left the ground at one time. Works by Clarissa Sligh, Sebastiao Salgado, and various others mentioned by Barrett, also attempt explanation, but more of a social ethnography or “visual sociology”, shedding light on social populations or events. While explanatory photographs are more of a “window”, interpretive photographs are more like Szarkowski’s “mirror”. These photographs display personal and subjective interpretations. Highlighted as examples by Barrett are Carlo McCormick, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, and Robert ParkeHarrison. Ethically evaluative photographs can describe, explain, and interpret, but the master characteristic is an ethical judgment. Summed up in a phrase, these photographers can be “muckraker[s] with a camera.” Closing his categories Barrett discusses the aesthetically and theoretically evaluative photographs. While the first concentrates on more formal characteristics of the visual, the later is photography about photography. All in all, Barrett’s categories of photographs include the wide range of photographs from scientific to artistic, mundane to the extraordinary. Like his various interpretive perspectives, these categories give the viewer a place to begin discussing a work of art. Barrett does make clear that these categories should not be in any way limiting, but aid in focusing a critique or starting a discussion. For in the end, it is not the truth art critiques are after but the debate towards the reasonable.
Criticizing Photographs Chapter 5: Photographs and Contexts, Barrett
After outlining varying types of photographs, Barrett’s next chapter speaks to the contexts of photographs that help in accurate categorization. Contextual information can either be internal, original, or external. Barrett describes a photograph’s internal context as “what is descriptively evident,” referring back to elements used to describe photographs, including subject matter, medium, and form. Although some photographs may be understood solely through their internal information, many cannot. Original context refers to the history (social, art, and personal) of the photograph and the photographer. Original contextual information can refer to past work of the photographer, the photographer’s intentions, perhaps a reference to art history, any information that can be given about a photograph that isn’t immediately evident from viewing the work. External context refers to the situation or environment of the photograph. Whether a photograph is seen in a gallery, magazine, art book, advertisement, or classroom can change the meaning and connotation of a scene. As an example Barrett uses the various uses of Rober Doisneau’s photograph of a French café. The viewed interpretation of the same photograph was altered by external context from a lovely scene of a French café to a crude scene of prostitution. The external context, which further influenced the connotation of the scene, was changed without the consent of the photographer or the photographed subjects. [If this was done in the 1950’s (law suits and all) one cannot begin to imagine the variety of external contexts photographs may be found in today with the use of the internet!] The context, both internal, original, and external, greatly influences a viewers perception and understanding of a photograph. An accurate portrayal and comprehension of a photographs context is essential in a valid description, categorization, and interpretation.
Chriticizing Photographs Chapter 6: Judging Photographs, Barrett
Although criticizing photographs doesn’t necessarily involve judging them, some judgment often comes across on behalf of the critic. However, as Barrett explains, these judgments are not arbitrary calls on behalf of subjective aesthetic values, but based off a certain set of criteria. Barrett gives his reader various examples of judgments voiced by critics[1]. Just as interpretations, judgments are critical statements that require support and evidence. This evidence for a certain judgment is based on a set of criteria. Criteria, Barrett states “are usually based in definitions of art and in aesthetic theories of what art should be.” Barrett clusters these criteria into realism, expressionism, formalism, and instrumentalism. Realism is senior and more classical theories of art. Barrett writes, “for the realist, because the world is the standard of truth, and because it is incomparably beautiful, the most noble goal of the artist is to attempt to accurately portray the universe in all its variations.” Realism, strongly supported in photography by Paul Strand and Edward Weston, strives use the camera to document life. While realism calls for what is referred to as straight photography, expressionism allows for manipulations by the photographer to further represent an inner individuality. Barrett points out “the end was art and the means were whatever the photographer could use to attain that end,” including collage, soft-focus, textured paper, hand touching, costumes, props, etc. Formalism, closely allied with modernism, fights for “art for art’s sake.” Fighting for judgment by a unique “photographic” criteria, formalists support abstraction, nonrepresentational imagery, and minimalist art. Finally, instrumentalists “reject the notion of art for art’s sake and instead embrace art for life’s sake.” Believing that art serves an important role in opening the eyes of society, instrumentalists believe that photographs should do more than just follow rules of aesthetics. They should become engrossed in educating and combating social ills such as AIDS. Other criteria exist, including originality and craftsmanship, but these can be overlaid or combined with the four previously discussed. In summarizing the chapter, Barrett points out some principles for judging photographs. Here are some of the main considerations:
- Appraisals + reasons + criteria = judgments
- Judgments are different from preferences.
- Judgments, like interpretations, should be persuasive arguments.
- Some criteria can be combined, while others are mutually exclusive.
- Judgments of photographs are usually based on worldviews broader than aesthetic views.
- Different judgments are beneficial because they highlight different aspects of photographs that we might otherwise overlook.
Criticizing Photographs Chapter 7: Photography Theory, Barrett
Although a view rarely held by undergraduate students, I state it earnestly and with great passion: I love theory. Theoretical understandings of life not only add such depth of understanding and comprehension, but challenge original assumptions. Forcing yourself to think twice about knowledge we hold evident, one of the primary tenants of critical theorists, only aids in the expansion of thought, of the heart, and of being. In reading this chapter it was interesting to see the extent of congruency between photography theory and sociological theory. Although I was originally surprised, especially when Barrett pointed out how “positivism and the camera and sociology grew up together,” on further thought I decided that I shouldn’t be remotely surprised at the similarity in thought trajectory. Since theoretical conventions are shaped through historical events, made in argument to previous strains of thought, and react to significant happenings in modernity, it would only make sense that theoretical thinkers, in philosophy, social sciences, and in art, would progress alongside each other.
Enough of my musing and onto the summary. Barrett labels his theoretical frames into four main categories: ontology, epistemology, aesthetics, and ethics. Ontological questions dealing with the essence of what a photograph is. This question has been made a great deal more complicated with the invention of digital images, for no longer is photography a tangible physical object, but now electronic data which tends to escape the everyday comprehension. Digital photography has also thrown into questions epistemological concerns of validity in photography. Two competing camps of epistemological questions include realist theory and conventionalist theory. The first gives positivist arguments of hard truths in the world, while the later concentrates on more postmodern fluidity of the truth. Aesthetic concerns ask whether photography is art. I very much like a quotation by Andy Grundberg that states “Much of the critical attention to photography was directed at its functional role in contemporary culture, and to its instrumental role in forming that culture. In other words, photographs were recognized as both reflections and producers of the world in which we live.” Along a similar line, Barrett briefly touches upon one of my favorite theories in art that is George Dickey’s Institutional Theory of Art. When asking what is considered art, Dickey argues that an object can be considered art if it is treated like so by those around it. Museums, galleries, critics, collectors, and artists themselves give objects legitimation as “art”. Really, a provocative and in my opinion explanatory theory of contemporary art. Barrett continues to explain the difference between modernist and postmodernist concerns (something that I find to be basic so I will skip in my summary). Finally coming to ethical concerns, this category tends to hold the more controversial and stimulating theories due to its relationship with morality. For the theories under this category I am going to list them below with details of Barrett’s explanation I found intriguing.
- Marxist Theory: Truthfully, as someone who is rather informed on Marxist theory I didn’t like Barrett’s explanation and connection to photography. I did however enjoy these statements. The first is by Allan Sekula. He states “Pity, mediated by an appreciation of ‘great art,’ supplants political understandings.” Secondly, Barrett writes, “photography deals with surface appearances, and surfaces obscure rather than reveal the actual complex social relations that underlie appearances.”
- Feminist Theory: Who couldn’t love the Guerrilla Girls? I wish Barrett spoke about them more because I absolutely love their work. A perfect mix of shock, humor, and honesty.
- Multicultural Theory: I think it’s important to understand the impact of visual media in our culture, especially when it comes to reinforcing stereotypes and hegemonic structures. Barrett discusses Nicholas Mirzoeff and his critique of Steichen’s “The Family of Man.” Hoe Africans are represented as primitive and in stark contrast to the white civilized man.
- Queer Theory: I love David Halperin’s quote, “queer is by definition whatever is at odds with the normal, the legitimate, the dominant.”
- Postcolonial Theory: I could say so much about this topic. But I will simply state that I wish Barrett had included more examples of images or at least photographers so I could look them up later.
Criticizing Photographs Chapter 8: Writing and Talking about Photographs, Barrett
In the final chapter of his book, Barrett discusses how to write and talk about photographs. Providing many student examples of quick writes and careful-writes, Barrett shows that there are a variety of different ways to discuss, interpret, and judge photographs. As long as each of these is accompanied by a well thought-out argument and supportive claims, they all add to a knowledge and understanding of the photograph, and of life at large. Most interesting in this chapter, in my opinion was the various writing samples on Sally Mann’s work. Maybe because I find Mann’s photographs so capturing, but also because of the variety of viewpoints and potential for further discussion. Reverting slightly back into my passion for theory, I particularly enjoyed the piece by Terry Hermsen and his connection to Heidegger. Hermsen writes, “I have come to see art, the way he does, as the conduit between what he calls “earth” and the human “world” that we make as we draw form earth our sustenance and civilization…. Art, [Heidegger] says, takes us back to being, to that marvelous meeting of earth and world, that charged and mysterious convergence. I think Sally Mann’s photographs in Immediate Family trouble people so much BECAUSE they tap so strongly into what Heidegger suggests art is supposed to do: bring the essences of earth back into our ever-easily-contained consciousness.” I absolutely love this explanation. Including the whole quote doesn’t necessarily make a pertinent addition to my summary, but does put it in a place that I can refer to it in the future.
Information included in the end of the chapter includes tips on writing an artists’ statement, general process tips of writing, and tips for studio critiques. All of which I found interesting and I’m sure will be useful later, but at the time, rather difficult to read through.
Just to quickly summarize Barrett’s book and my reactions, Criticizing Photographs gives readers a good introduction into the thought processes and understandings necessary to adequately assess photographs. Moving from a purely descriptive process into an interpretive and finally judgmental reaction, Barrett emphasizes the importance of evidence based responses instead of subjective, emotionally driven reactions. Overall, the book also gave a lot of history of photography, highlighting important photographers, works, galleries, critics, and publications. For my future records, and for anyone reading this I am going to give a list of photographers that Barrett emphasizes in importance: Henri Cartier-Bresson, John Coplans, Rimma and Valeriy Gerlovin, Emmit Gowin, Barbara Kruger, Annie Leibovitz, Robert Mapplethorpe, Joel Meyerowitz, Sally Mann, Duane Michals, Nic Nicosia, Irving Penn, Andres Serrano, Cindy Sherman, Lorna Simpson, Sandy Skoglund, Mike and Doug Starn, Jock Sturges, Carrie Mae Weems, William Wegman, Hanna Wilke, and Joel-Peter Witkin.
[1] In these examples, it is easy to see the poetic background many critics have. My favorite quotations include, “his genius lay in his recognition that unretouched reality was already tractable enough, that the world was most intoxicating when served straight up.” Richard Lacayo discussing Henri Cartier-Bresson, “Using unerring tact and impeccable focus, Sarah Charlesworth sums up a generation’s concerns with a whisper” Kate Linker, “the eye is seduced- but the mind gags” Mark Stevens discussing works by Irving Penn.
