On the 8th, I posted a question:
When you look at a photograph, what questions do you ask about it? What steps do you take in the process of making a judgment about the photograph, or in deciding how you feel about it? What happens in the time between when you first see the photograph and when you decide whether or not it is interesting to you?
I received some interesting responses. By far my favorite was @vossbrink’s reply on twitter: “Does it match my sofa?”
He also posted a longer response at his blog. Do read it. He raises an important point about the context-sensitivity of the degree and kind of question the viewer brings to the photograph — i.e., “that I’ve chosen to visit the museum means I’ve committed to looking,” but the same does not apply to perusing photo blogs. And in the latter context, the fundamental question is: “is this worth my time?”
Simen and JasonSMoore point out that as viewers we don’t necessarily “decide how we feel,” as I put it; we have our feelings and then we rationalize those feelings after the fact. I think this is often but not always the case. Often I’ll have a given initial stance toward a photograph, but sometimes I’ll see a photograph and look at it for a long while before I can decide anything at all about it, including whether or not it is worth looking at.
Ault talks about an experience that I’m sure is inevitable for most photographers: “When I really look at a photograph, I can’t help but view it from a photographer’s viewpoint.” For me, this is both a blessing and a curse: on the one hand, having an understanding of what goes into making a photograph enables one to pick up on a lot that a lay viewer (or even a viewer with an academic or at background but no practical experience) may miss; but, on the other hand, it tends to make it easy for me to get caught up in minutiae. When all I can think about is how a scene was lit or whether or not a view camera was necessary to make a photograph, it’s easy for me to miss more central questions.
AG De Mesa suggests a useful distinction between categories of question: technical, emotional (“what does the photograph make me feel”), and intellectual (“what does the academe or the so called ‘Art World’ say about this photograph.”). He also points out that really engaging with a photograph may require active research and that research may take time.
This is an important point, and it raises further questions, such as: how do you judge when research is called for? How do you decide when it is worthwhile to do that research? What sort of research do you do? How deep do you go? How do you know when you know “enough”?
I’ve also been working on a response of my own. I reflected on what has gone through my mind when I’ve looked at various photographs, and what sort of questions I’ve tried to answer for myself about them, what ad hoc procedures I’ve applied to them. I set aside the big-picture questions (like, “is it worth my time,” or “is it interesting,” or “is it good”), and tried to pin down the questions that I might have to go through to get to the point where I could answer those big-picture questions. More specifically, I tried to find questions which are likely to have specific answers, at least some of the time.
Here are some, in no special order:
- What is the emotional state of each person in the photograph?
- What is the emotional state of the photographer?
- How big is the photo?
- What is the path my eye follows as I look at the photograph?
- List the contents of the photograph in order of apparent size
- List the contents of the photograph in order of light to dark tonal value
- What are the race, economic status, gender, and relationships of the subjects in the photograph?
- What’s just outside the frame?
- When was the photo made?
- What are the characteristics of the medium /in/by which the photograph is presented?
- What symbols appear in the image?
- Where do the gaze lines of the subjects point?
- How long did it take to make the photograph?
- How far away was the photographer from the subject?
- What is the attitude of the photograph toward the subject?
- For what feeling is the photograph an equivalent?
- What is the photograph’s market?
- Is the current use of the photograph different from it’s original or intended use?
- Attempt to look at the photograph, without thinking about it, for thirty seconds.
- What is the genre of the photograph?
- Is the photograph typical or atypical of its genre?
- Draw the lines or shapes that are important to the photograph’s composition.
- How much time passed between the photograph being made and this medium being prepared?
- Who determined the sequence?
- How long is the sequence?
- Where in the sequence does this photograph fall?
- Compare the photograph to other photographs in the sequence.
- What is the sense of place in the photograph?
- Does the photograph expand my knowledge of what is depicted?
- Does the photograph expand my understanding of what is depicted?
- What have I previously heard or read about the photograph or series?
- What have I have previously heard or read about the photographer?
- Check Amazon to see what books by the photographer are in print
- Google the photograph
- Google the photographer
- Google the subject
- Google the location
- Check my bookmarks for related links.
- Search my notes for related content.
- Read posts I’ve written before about this photographer or related topics.
- Ask other people what they think.
- (As a follow-up to any of the above questions:) How does that influence the way I see and understand this photograph?
Of course, in practice, for any given photograph, I will probably only actually raise two or three of these questions. I’m not sure to what extent this reflects the inherent diversity of the medium, and to what extent it reflects the limitations of my attention span. Nor could I tell you honestly that there’s any kind of method to the process by which I determine what questions are interesting for what photographs.
