How to Critique Properly

[Brian Ellis]

I don't know that it's an "art" because I think the first requisite of a good critique is knowledge, which can be aquired. While there obviously are good critiques and bad critiques a good critique isn't based on "perfect wording and grammar to create a fluid flow of words streaming down the page." That's good writing, not necessarily good critiquing. A relative handful of people, e.g. John Szarkowski, combined the two. But if you want to learn how to critique a photograph I'd suggest reading the book "Criticizing Photographs - An Introduction to Understanding Images" by Terry Barrett. If you want an example of good critiquing read John Szarkowski's book "Looking at Photographs." And if you want a good critique of your own work attend one of John Sexton's workshops. Just my opinion of course.

[Steve Kefford]

Is there a kind of 'art' towards giving proper critiques to other pieces of work?......

Depends upon the ego of the photographer :-).

Steve

[Alan Davenport]

Colourful language, if it furthers understanding, can enhance a critique, but too often obscures the fact that the writer does not have anything to say.

So, telling a photographer that his/her work is redolent of a reeking mound of equine excreta, might be appropriate in some cases?

[paulr]

I'd stop short of calling criticism an art ... critics don't usually do their best work when burdened with big egos. But it's a serious discipline; one that's been studied in its own right. Anyone who's studied literature or art history in the last couple of decades has had to learn about the various movements in critical theory. They date back to Aristotle, move on through the 19th century philosophers, and include many 20th century practitioners, including T.S. Eliot, Jacques Derrida, John Berger, and Stanley Fish.

A lot of it has to do with the foundations of meaning, which most people make assumptions about without questioning any rigorous way.

I think giving useful criticism starts with asking the artist what (if anything) they'd like to hear from you. There are so many ways to approach an image. You don't want to start psychoanalyzing someone when all they really want is your opinion on the frame they picked. Or vice versa.

[cpeterson]

When I read threads like this on the internet I often wonder if I have a different notion of what "critiquing" art really means.

My experience with art critique, in both giving it and receiving it, usually begins at the conceptual level and moves on from there. Sure, there's always an initial dialogue with the aesthetic qualities of the piece, but I try to wait until I'm beginning to grasp the concept and scope of the work before I open my mouth. And usually, that's difficult to do without some familiarity with the artist and their body of work completed thus far on the topic.

Much critique on the internet is done on a singleton basis -- "I humbly submit this street portrait for Critique by the Group" -- and the feedback that follows usually stays within the safe realm of commentary on the visual form of the piece (the distant sea stack on the horizon really balances the tree in the foreground!) or sometimes refuses to go beyond consideration of technical characteristics (nice tonality, is this stand-developed?).

What I'm coming to terms with is that this is essentially what most hobbyists expect and want. Encouragement, positive feedback, reinforcement that they're doing the right thing. Many of us work in a vacuum, literally a dark cave, and the internet provides some good drive-by commentary under the guise of critique.

My experience at school, though, goes way beyond this. Some of the time, critiques don't give you any sort of resolution; you put half a dozen 16x20's on the wall and say, "this is where I'm going with this project" and in return you get into an intense discussion about the rise of precision manufacturing and the subsequent decline of craftsmanship in household goods, a book recommendation, and a list of photographers and other artists to google. Your audience might be critical about your approach or they might identify a conceptual problem ("it doesn't make sense to traditionally enlarge these glass plates; if you want to exploit irony, have you considered inkjets?").

Bringing it back around now to the OP: How to Critique Properly. While I realize that the intent of the OP might have been to take a swipe at ivory towerism, I've written this long reply here because there does seem to be a general desire among photographers on the internet for Real Feedback or Formal Critique, but few seem to know where to look for it. It isn't enough to shoot, scan and upload; photographers need to take themselves seriously and submit portfolios for shows, to magazines, to galleries, etc. A great way to find qualified people willing to take an in-depth look at your work is to regard yourself as a member of the art community and to seek some exposure under those auspices. Whether the feedback comes forth like smooth wine and fine cheese on opening night or like cheap beer in a pub matters not if it brings you to a heightened vector of thinking and reinforces your creative identity.

At any rate, it's time to begin cooking my contribution to tomorrow night's feast. This post brought to you by the department of too much coffee.

[Rob Champagne]

There's a chapter on "Critiquing Photographs" in "Perception and Imaging" by Richard D Zakia. Its an interesting book worth reading.

But you still have to sift the BS from the genuine critiques by people who know what they are saying.

See "Pseuds Corner" weekly for generic examples.

[paulr]

Much critique on the internet is done on a singleton basis -- "I humbly submit this street portrait for Critique by the Group" -- and the feedback that follows usually stays within the safe realm of commentary on the visual form of the piece (the distant sea stack on the horizon really balances the tree in the foreground!) or sometimes refuses to go beyond consideration of technical characteristics (nice tonality, is this stand-developed?).

What I'm coming to terms with is that this is essentially what most hobbyists expect and want.

Yes, I see the same thing. It can be frustrating when someone submits a picture like this, because it's usually a picture that can't stand on its own ... and even if it could, it would still beg for the context of a body of work.

In school your critiques involved whole groups of pictures. This makes sense ... people can look at them together and get a broad sense of what you're trying to do. Then individual pictures can be discussed in relation to this.

When a single picture gets thrown on the wall in front of people who have no idea where it's coming from, discussion usually gets forced to the most banal possible kind--usually generic technical advice that's completely divorced from what the picture's about ("I think you need to burn the left edge more. And the sky would be cooler if you used a red filter!").

[janepaints]

I have no idea if there's a proper way to critique.

In my experience, I gained the most from critiquing by mentors aka bonafide instructors. The trick is finding and recognizing the right mentor for what you're aiming for. By the senior year of art school I was making very chaotic paintings. Pure color and letting the paint make it's own designs. By senior year each student was required to choose two mentors, and all work would be shown-to and critiqued by only those two.

One of my mentors was a beatnik-type fellow. He'd look at my work and say "cool" or "nah--that ain't happening" but not much else. He was also a musician and often we'd end up jamming together. We became good pals but I don't think I learned much from him.

My other mentor was an old-school classicist. His own work was fine-detailed egg tempera. 'You can see every blade of grass'. He was also a musician--classical piano. So we never jammed But he helped me enormously. He didn't care how messy, chaotic or abstract my work was. What he did demand was that I could articulate what I was trying to do--my concept, aims, etc. If the work was in-harmony with my concept, then he thought I was doing ok, even tho it was worlds-away from his own concept & work. (neat photography-link: he'd worked closely & become pals with Eisenstadt via a Time-Life Inc. project--which fact was rarely mentioned, being irrelevant to our relationship--but it seemed pretty cool to me!)

I never liked the round-robin all-the-students-going-at-each-other's work critiques. Too many psycho-emotional factors. Do they hate me? Like me? Envious? Disdainful? Those situations just made me cringe.

I've participated in very few group shows and have refused ALL offers of one-person shows. They give me the willies. I feel like I'm on-display. Besides, what are people gonna say to you at Exhibition Openings? "Gee it's fabulous!." "I Love It!" Nobody is gonna walk up and say "This sucks" Instead, I work with a gallery which exhibits 'salon-style'. Open 6 days a week. When work is done I take it to them and they display it. No 'public persona' business is required of me.

I love what H.L. Menken once said: "If you have any kindly comments about my work please write them on the back of a substantial check."

However, there's another critiquing method which I learned a lot from...found it to be very helpful and very sanity-saving. I stumbled upon it by accident.

Just before becoming a painter full-time I was in desperate financial straits. I began to sell stuff at flea markets. Records, books, broken instruments I'd fixed-up. After awhile I included some of my paintings but without any attribution. People could think that they were just old paintings, same as all the other anonymous paintings which fill fleas, yard & rummage sales. I also displayed (and even sold) a few of my photos.

I heard just about every kind of response possible. Most were surely very honest and certainly candid. I heard everything! "Honey, c'mere and look at this piece of crap!"...."Wow, that's lovely"..."Hmmm Cubism!"

I've never painted anything remotely 'cubist.'

and my fave: How much is this painting?

It was such a good experience. It tempered my ego. It made me realize the truth of the maxim "it's none of your business what other people think of you". If somebody thought my paintings stank, they DID stink--for anyone who thought such. Perhaps my fave response was when little kids asked "hey how much is that picture?" If a kid likes something, they just like it--little context or baggage cluttering up their heads. They're acting on emotional/visceral impulses far-removed from the traffic jams of adult notion world. It's like "wow I like mashed potatoes!"--not "I like mashed potatoes because blah blah blah _______________"

It was also a good lesson in monetary matters. When younger, fresh out of art school, I'd read in art journals about the prices paid for 'name' paintings, and thought that some paintings of mine, being kinda similar in style & craftsmanship--read: 'derivative' --should therefore be worth the same, and so I priced them accordingly. High. Four figures. And nothing sold. Nada. Zero. Zip.

When I began flea-marketing, I'd recently been laid-off from a graphics job where I worked a 40 hour week and brought home $375 after taxes. So when someone was willing to give me $200 for a painting which had taken me 4 hours to make (and was FUN to make) I was amazed & thrilled & grateful. Heck, I was happy if they gave me $100!

Eventually, I was offered exhibition opportunities from bonafide dealers as a result of showing & selling my stuff at the flea. Word slowly got around. Prices nowadays are much different than back then, but they've grown as a result of What The Market Will Bear, and not from my own opinion of what they're worth.

I had re-learned what I knew instinctively (but had then forgotten) years earlier as a kid punk-rock musician: DIY. Do It Yourself. Take your message right to the people and see if it sticks. If no entrances to the Legit World seems viable, try to invent or find an alternative. Stick to your guns and put your money where your mouth is.

I often wonder about Atget. He marketed his photos as 'documents for artists.' Theoretically painters would buy his photos to copy-from for their paintings. His income may have been meagre, but he managed to keep going for a good long while and left a large & consistent body of work. My take is that he knew his work was wothwhile, that he had a genuine drive and passion to photograph, that he probably wasn't much given to self-analysis or self-consciousness and didn't give two hoots whether he was making 'art' or not. I doubt he was an 'ego-tripper.' I think he was, perhaps, just WAY INTO making photos. Labor Of Love. As long as he could pay the bills and buy more plates, who cared what anybody else thought about what he was doing? Maybe Atget was an idiot savant, or maybe he was a wise & balanced fellow. What do you think?

How many images made by the (many many many) higher-paid & more-fashionable-and-celebrated Parisian photographer-contemporaries of Atget's are still looked-at, discussed or deemed to have artistic merit and lasting worth?

Ars longa, vita brevis (sic?)
The dust sometimes takes its own sweet time to settle.
One never knows, do one?
And even so, it's still a crap shoot.
Lady Luck and Dame Fortune etc.
States of Grace.

[David Karp]

My experience, from three - four pretty good "critiquers" over years, one of them being John Sexton (at a workshop):

Start with something positive. There is almost always something positive you can find in a photo. Be honest. Choose your words carefully. There are many ways to say the same thing. It can hurt, or it can be constructive. No reason to hurt anyone. Always recognize that your critique is your opinion. You are not right, you are not wrong. Be humble about it. Be constructive. Look for something you can learn as well as something to comment on. Photography is both art and craft. Look at both aspects. Try to end on a positive note.

[John Kasaian]

IMHO, criticism has become not an art form but a genre. People love to hear critics haul someone over the coals---its a sickness. To call criticism an art form would be like calling drowning puppies an art form. This genre is confused with the real purpose of criticism which is not to drown puppies but rather to develop better dogs.