Arts Criticism & Analysis

Describing Photographs

To describe a photograph/ an exhibition is to notice things about it and to tell another what you notices.

Desciption
- data-gathering process, a listing of facts.
- answers to questions : What is here? What am I looking at? What do I know with certainty about this image?
- The answers are the identification of the obvious and the not so obvious.
- Even when certain things seem obvious , the critic points them out because they know that what is obvious to a viewer might be invisible to another?

Descriptive information
- statement about the photograph’s subject matter, medium and form
- and then more generally, about the photograph’s casual environment, including information about the photographer who made it, the times during which it was made and social milieu from which it emerged.
-True (or false)
-Acurate or inaccurate.
-Factual (or contrary to the fact)

Descriptive statements
-verifiable by observations
-an appeal to an factual evidence

Critics obtain descriptive information from two sources
- Internal : Derived much descriptive info by closely attending to what can be seen within the photograph.
- External : Libraries, artist who made pictures.Press release.

Describing subject matter
- identitfy and typify persons,
- Objects, places, or events in a photograph.
- When describing subject matter, critics name what they see and also characterize it.
- Subject matter can be simple yet elusive.

Describing form
- how subject matter is presented.
- shape of content : how is it composed, arranged and constructed visually.
- usage of formal events

Describing Medium
-what it is made of.

PS. i
-interpretive vs descriptive.
-Photography formal elements
-black n white tonal range
-subject contrast
-film contrast
-negative contrast
-paper contrast
-film format