Exercise 18 An essay on reviewing photographs

Read the essay 'Words and Pictures: On reviewing photographs' by Liz Wells in your course reader.

• what is the basic argument of Wells' essay?
• is the essay's title a fair indication of the essay itself?
• to what extend does the writer rely on Post modernist doctrine?
• the essay raises the issue of the qualifications and duties of a critic.  How important do you believe it is for a critic of photography to have deep knowledge of the practice of photography?

What is the basic argument of Wells' essay? Is the essay's title a fair indication of the essay itself? To what extend does the writer rely on Post modernist doctrine?

The essay raises the issue of the qualifications and duties of a critic.  How important do you believe it is for a critic of photography to have deep knowledge of the practice of photography?

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Definitions

I’ve found some words that I need to check the definition of:

Postmodernism: (courtesy of Google definitions)

A late 20th-century style and concept in the arts, architecture, and criticism, which represents a departure from modernism and is characterized by the self-conscious use of earlier styles and conventions, a mixing of different artistic styles and media, and a general distrust of theories.

Hegemony: (courtesy of Google definitions)

Leadership or dominance, especially by one state or social group over others.  "Germany was united under Prussian hegemony after 1871"

Metanarrative: (courtesy www.sociology.org.uk/ws1k5.htm)

In literal terms, a metanarrative means a "big story". It represents, in short, an Metanarrative: "Big Stories" explanation for everything that happens in a society.

What is the basic argument of Wells' essay?

The essay discusses the role of the critic when it comes to reviewing exhibitions and other media.  Wells discusses the fact that until recently photography has been relatively overlooked within the historical context.  She felt that catalogues and critiques of exhibitions and books were unable to give full justice to those bodies of work.  Readers

Any review cannot reproduce all the exhibited works and so words are used. Wells tells us 'pictures do not necessarily speak louder than words, but they speak differently' and that 'critics take responsibility for feedback to artists and mediation with audiences' in publications that typically outlive the exhibitions.  Readers could be misled as to the content and quality of these works as it is impossible to review all the exhibits.

 

Is the essay's title a fair indication of the essay itself?

The title is "Words and pictures: On reviewing photography".  In my opinion the title only conveys part of the whole content of the essay as it includes criticisms of the current digital era in a postmodern mood.  As the title is a bit vague as to the content it could be that Liz Wells intended to make the reader curious as to the content and wanted them to read on rather than just the first few paragraphs.

To what extend does the writer rely on Postmodernist doctrine?

The essay starts by laying the groundwork of explaining why criticism is needed and the form it takes in balancing words with pictures.

The author feels that pictures do not necessarily speak louder than words but they do not always give the full picture.  The argument develops in the context that we now live in an climate of postmodern thinking and that more established ways of formal thinking (e.g. 'modernist metanarratives') have been superseded. 

As we move away from a modernist notion of a uniform value system applied consistently by connoisseurs, criticism has ceased to be neutral and therefore must increasingly involve the careful application of taste, judgement and independent opinion.  In my opinion I think Wells does rely on postmodernist doctrines.

The essay raises the issue of the qualifications and duties of a critic.  How important do you believe it is for a critic of photography to have deep knowledge of the practice of photography? 

A critic is not required to produce photographs or images but, in my opinion, anyone who sets himself or herself up to criticise any form of image making should have experience in that medium.  They must also put themselves up for criticism of their own work.

 

Exercise 17: Review your last assignment

Make some notes in your learning log in response to your tutor's comments on your photographic book cover and do any reworking that's necessary.

Carefully review your reworked assignment alongside your first effort and make notes in your learning log about what you've learned during the reworking process.

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Tutor / My Comments - Assignment 3

Overall Comments

It might be as well to have a look at the brief for the final assignment as you might find that the summer period supplies the greatest opportunities for its completion and forward planning is never wasted!

Feedback on assignment

This certainly has the look and feel of similar articles in many of the county magazines I have seen.  This may be taken as a positive or negative criticism or (this is the correct choice) both.  If you are looking to maximise your local commercial potential then there is a good argument that looking like all the others is the way to go, just remember the photo-journalists’ adage “f8 and be there”.  

However, if an editor has submissions from two hopefuls, why would they choose yours? (I am not really speaking directly to your submission but in general)  You need to have something that stands out, that is your signature that the editor will remember and commission signature that the editor will remember and commission you rather than anyone else.

So I would like to have seen you push the boundaries a bit.  You should, perhaps, try to make it unique to Lyme Regis, to your particular town crier, and make it appeal to those from outside as well as those from Lyme itself.

Your images are well composed in general, correctly exposed and focused and so on so you have the basic skills, you have done the research on town criers in general and done a good interview with your chosen subject, what we need to see is your personal take on the whole thing.  (I confess that I feel that a lot of editors on local magazines and so on aren’t interested in anything original but then I am just an old cynic!)

I feel you have been ambivalent in writing your comments about my work.  I put a lot of effort into creating relevant images in a format that I think would be of interest to local and county publications.  It’s almost as if you are afraid of upsetting me with negative comments.

My images showed the town crier as he goes about his daily tasks for the benefit of the town.  If you are looking for extreme images of him then I’m afraid you would be disappointed, what I showed was a generous man prepared to give his time to the town he represents and extending his generosity to me, allowing me to follow him around and also set up various scenarios in situations that I thought would be relevant.

I really do feel that you should be shooting in RAW.  As you are using Lightroom, any adjustments that need to be made to large numbers of your images to adjust for your particular camera, for example to deal with slight de-saturation of the colour, adding capture sharpening, lens correction, etc etc. can be set up as a preset and applied to all at once as can exporting to your preferred j[eg settings or to a required setting for a particular client.  But you still have all the original image to work with at another time and for another project.  Why have a camera that shoots umpteen megapixels only to have half of them thrown away and why rely on someone else’s idea of how an image should look?

I have adjusted my camera to take RAW and JPG images simultaneously and will concentrate on the RAW images using the JPG for reference.  This caused a problem with my Photoshop software as CS5, which was the version I was using doesn’t support my Nikon D5200 camera.  After various searches on Photoshop forums and a phone call to Adobe, I had to accept that I needed to upgrade my software.  As a student I was offered a deal with Creative Cloud for one application at £8.95 per month for 12 months so opted for that.  After two weeks I was told that this price would be indefinitely and they also threw in Adobe Lightroom version 5 for free.  It seemed the best solution at the time so I took it and can now convert the RAW files from my camera with no problem.

Just a couple of general thoughts.  All lenses work at their optimum sharpness etc at about middle apertures; this usually means around f8.  Digital lenses are particularly poor at the extremes and most consumer lenses really do loose sharpness when used at maximum aperture or at f16 and smaller.  However, except with full frame sensors, depth of field is always large so it is difficult to use differential focus effects to isolate the main subject and at f8 depth of field is pretty enormous even when using a longish focal length.  So either one has to accept this, in your images, at least the final ones, you have accepted this and included the background, crowds etc. as a major part of the subject, or compromise on sharpness and use the widest aperture available and as long a focal length as is feasible when differential focus is a needed technique.

I have taken on board your comments regarding focal lengths and hope it shows in my future assignments.

Another thing is avoidance of noise in areas of even tone/colour and particular in low light levels.  Not that noise is a problem in any of your images here.  It is worth remembering that changing the ISO is just like turning the volume up on a radio, the music gets louder but so does any hiss and crackle.  So the advice is to use the native ISO of the sensor (usually the lowest setting but not always) and only raise the ISO when it is impossible to do otherwise.  What prompted me to mention this was seeing that you had used 400ISO for an outside shot where you could as easily used a wider aperture and a slower shutter speed with a lower ISO.

A final point is about the use of wide angle at close quarters.  If you look at your shot Preparing you can see that the photos on the wall form a bit of an arc and the hands are rather out of proportion.  Neither of these things are particularly distracting in this particular shot, but, be aware of this effect in future where it might spoil the shot.  It’s all about training your eye.

I think that you should put thumbnails as contact sheets in your assessment submission.  The learning log is perhaps the best place for them with comments on your choices.  It will help to give the assessors the same sort of idea of the way you work and the sort of reasoning for your choices as your submissions to me do.

I have now produced thumbnail sheets using Adobe Bridge as there is no File/Automate/sheets in the new version of Photoshop CC.

Learning Logs/Critical essays

Now you are back in harness as it were, I would like to see even more in your blog about books you are reading/consulting, magazine and/or Internet sites you have visited and read, exhibitions (real and virtual) and so on in relation to your own work.  Discussing things that are more or less connected to your photography practice is a vital part of a good learning log/blog.

I have attempted to keep up my learning blog and am hoping to be more involved with study days, both with the South West group and general photographic days.  I have booked myself on the Hayward Gallery study day at the Hayward Gallery on the South Bank on December 7^th.