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Photo Critique |
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Through my years of teaching photography I have often conducted photographic critique and have had my students practice a form of critique in order to better understand the photograph. I have developed a form of critique which worked for me and my students to give us a common language for criticism. It is based on the formal critique methods of Edmund Burke Feldman filtered through years of use. Below the steps are defined and an example is given. |
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Criticism is intended to give the photograph its just measure and is meant to get the viewer more involved with the work. It follows these steps. The Informal Part of Criticism Initial reaction. This is an internal emotion that should not be formalized at this point. In fact you should find a way to put this feeling aside in order to conduct a thorough investigation of the work. You often hear “I like it.” or “I hate it.” comments. Sometimes this reaction will be to simply pass the image by to look at another. The Formal Part of Criticism 1. Description: Inventory what you see. Make a list. No conclusions. No assumptions. Note obvious technical qualities. 2. Analysis: Take your list and look for relationships. Compare things that you see. Look for similarities and differences. 3. Interpretation: Offer hypotheses for the relationships that you discovered. Offer up a brainstorm of possibilities for what the photo means, why the photographer took it and what the viewer should derive from it. 4. Judgment: Based on you assumptions from the interpretation, make a statement or offer your opinion of how successful the photographer was at making the photograph. |
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1 Description: The focus is sharp throughout. Contrast degree is very high. Colors are bright reds on the right and a little toward the left. Brilliant yellows in an “L” shape on the left and another bright yellow area just to the right of center. A pink system of linear forms occupies a large portion of the area between the yellow shapes. The area behind this pink section is light blue in color with dark rectangular shapes. A moderate green color is seen on many of the lines throughout the picture and medium blue rectangles are in the right ground. Characters of writing are dispersed within rectangular shapes. A purple fuzzy line drapes from the mid left to 2/3s across the picture. Small white round shapes are spread in a similar fashion. 2. Analysis: The writing appears to be chinese and english on signs. The pink and green lines form fire escape steps and the dark rectangular shapes appear to be windows. The two rectangular yellow shapes dominate the focus of the scene. The entire scene is of buildings displaying a multitude of metal fire escapes, signs and banners. The perspective fades slightly to the left. There appear to be no people in the picture. The purple draped object appears to be a string of lights or lanterns. 3. Interpretation: This is a chinese area of a city judging by the signs. The city is undetermined. I believe the photographer was interested in the jungle-like arrangement of the elements of the scene. There are no people seen but the place does look inhabited by a large number of them. A lot of the signs seem to be advertising restaurants and shops. Technically it looks like the photographer may have used a long lens to compress the panoply of shapes and lines lending to the feeling of being crowded. This is a graphic interpretation of the feeling one gets when visiting a Chinatown area of one of the large cities where they exist. 4. Judgment: The photographer gives us a nice sharp representation of Chinatown without the bustling of the people, but we feel they are there. This is a successful graphic interpretation of the emotion of visiting such a place. |
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