|
It is largely a series of essays about artistic content that is NOT even photography, most of it not even mainstream art, but 99% of it is about avant garde art pushing the boundaries - what some call art, others call pornography (a woman that shoots sexually charged "artistic" photos of her naked 5 year old). I would agree with a number of the other reviewers. A substantial number of the photos are not really photos, nor original, they are "photos of art objects" and then the author goes on to describe in details what the art is trying to portray - that is the real artist is the original artist and the photographer is not an artist, just went to an art gallery or museum and took a photo of a painting or some other art object.As stated, most of the text is not even about photography. This book is clearly not an "Introduction to Understanding Images" as the subtitle states. This book is clearly not even about "Criticizing Photographs" as the main title states. There are many large sections that discuss homosexuality, colonialism, morality in detail, and then in the last paragraph simply mention a photo, not even commenting on it, abruptly ending the section - and moving on to the next avant garde topic.It is a good book, if you are interested in becoming familiar with many of the pushing-the-status-quo in art-in-general (not necessarily just photography), and particularly if you are interested/obsessed with sexuality and morality issues.However, this is a bad book, if you interested in "Criticizing Photographs", interested in understanding photographic images, interested in the elements of photography, interested in evaluating your own photographs, or critiquing/judging other photographs.To be fair, there are sections that touch on fundamental concepts for evalulating photographic content, meaning, etc. Those sections contain good stuff, the author often gets started in chapters going along pretty good for the first 10-20% discussing photography related issues, then for someone reason abruptly gets sidetracked and heads done the road for the remaining part of the chapter obsessing about sexuality, morality, war-time incinerated bodies, mutilated humans or animals, or ones with birth defects, or other high shock value issues in art-in-general.In short, the parts about photography are very good - but most of the book in NOT about photography.
This was a required book for a college course, and it left a lot to be desired. It provides little to no direction for criticizing photographs. It really is all about a single person's preferences. I'd pass on this book unless you have to get it for a class.
The author also suggests a classification scheme for photographs which he believes could be useful in forming judgments, although I found it no better then many other taxonomies and at times difficult to apply to many photographs. It would be nice if the next edition included a page number when these plates are referred to.The subtitle, "An Introduction to Understanding Images" might lead one to expect that there would be some insights into how and why photographs work but I became aware that Barrett presumed his audience would have some prior knowledge of this. When I reviewed the third edition of this book several years ago, I didn't rate it highly, but I thought that perhaps the fourth edition might be a better book, and it is.Despite its subtitle, which might lead you to believe it is about understanding pictures, the bulk of this book is directed at formal criticism of photographs. He finally talks about the act of writing criticism and also about critiquing photographs.Barrett illustrates his points with many helpful examples of written criticism. In fact, no one volume is likely to do that, although a book like "The Photographer's Eye" by John Szarkowski would be a good place to start. Throughout he mentions many schools of analysis, like formalism and feminism and shows how these schools might influence criticism. The book is illustrated with both color plates and black and white plates, although the black and white plates are spread throughout the book, which leads to a lot of page flipping.
In the earlier edition, I found this a serious weakness, but it now seems clear that the author expects that this kind of information will come from somewhere else. After an introductory chapter on the nature of criticism, Barrett suggests a process for criticizing photographs that includes description, interpretation and judgment. Thus while he spoke of the importance of a photographer's technique in understanding a photo, there was no mention of how technique might be used to convey a photographer's vision. He then launches a foray into photographic critical theory which is concise but accurate and which deals with such questions as the truth and morality of photography. Most of the examples deal with pictures of the modern or post-modern school, but the information is transferable to other kinds of photography. On the other hand, the careful reader will derive some idea of what to look for in a photograph by reading the many examples.No one wanting to come to an understanding of how to read a photograph from a single volume will learn to do so from this book. On the other hand, for the individual who knows something about the nature of photography, or within the context of a larger course of study, this is a good book to begin to learn how to write photographic criticism.
This book was require for my college level digital photography course, but I felt that it did not do an adequate job of explaining the concepts it covers. The book is dull and merely lists other photographs as examples (they are not included in the text).
this book is probably going to be one of the required books for photography in college but it's not a horrible book. not the most exciting, but definitely has enough to get one started with critical thinking about photography and such.
|
