I presented the first session in my five week course on Reading Photographs on Monday.
The aim of the course is to improve the critical appreciation and understanding of the photographs around us in exhibitions, books, magazines, newspapers and online media. It is not about telling people what are good or bad photographs, nor about how to improve their photography (but that could be a side effect).
The course consists of five sessions: The Nature of Photography; What Shapes Our Reading?; Formal Qualities of Photographs; Different Approaches to Reading; and an Open Session.
This week’s session looked at what I argued are the ten key qualities of photography/the photograph that distinguish it from the other graphic arts.
- A photograph is of something, the ‘referent’
- It captures the momentary experience
- It provides evidence of the existence of the subject
- Nothing is off-limits in subject matter
- It yields new knowledge
- It makes what is photographed notable
- It is partial, in doth senses of the word
- It raises ethical issues
- It achieves the appearance of the real
- It is ubiquitous
Understanding these qualities is important to how we read photographs.
References: Ways of Seeing, John Berger, 1972; On Photography, Susan Sontag, 1973; Camera Lucida, Roland Barthes, 1980; The Ongoing Moment, Geoff Dyer, 2005.