Looking at a Photograph

Introduction

5 Minute Read

Contact sheet from Robert Frank's The Americans series

© Robert Frank, Contact Sheet - Guggenheim 340, from The Americans

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The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.

Dorothea Lange, from the Los Angeles Times, 1978

While using a camera may be beneficial in training our eyes to look and see, looking at photographs can be equally vital and necessary to not only train our sense of vision and perception, but also to further develop our critical inquiry about we may be looking at, whether it is a photograph, painting or some other visual experience.

These visual sensibilities can help inform how we can then consider the interpretive possibilities of the photograph, including what photograph may be about and what it may mean intellectually, emotionally, socially, and/or culturally. This is in addition to each of our own unique and personal histories, backgrounds and perspectives, which you may bring to the viewing experience that will even further inform and contribute to what a photograph may be about and mean.

Hopefully, the photograph is Visually Engaging (something you may want to look at beyond a short glace), and can be Intellectually Stimulating (photograph provides something for you to consider and think about) as well as Emotionally Responsive (photograph may cause us to feel a particular emotion and/or create a psychological state to feel).

Now that we've discussed photography's aesthetic considerations, we will:

Complete a Critical Image Analysis and Interpretation about a photograph, using the vocabulary discussed, including:

- Photography's eight (8) Aesthetic Considerations
- Directions of Light
- Compositional Organization
- Photographic Description
- Emphasis and Moments of Exposure
- Physical Characteristics of the Photograph, including Scale and Size of the Image

Connection

Understanding these considerations will be helpful in applying the terms and concepts towards successfully completing the following upcoming assignments:

One Picture - Image Analysis and Interpretation (GRADED ASSIGNMENT)

Vocabulary | Resources

Key Aesthetic Considerations for understanding how to look at as well as make photographs:

The Thing Itself
Detail
Frame
Vantage Point
Moment of Exposure
Use of Light
Emphasis/Focus
Color/Tone
- Descriptive Color
- Color of Light
- Grayscale

Difference between Making v. Taking Photographs

Directions of Light
Compositional Organization
Photographic Description
Emphasis and the Moment of Exposure

Photographic Materials, Processes and Scale

Visually Engaging - something you may want to look at beyond a short glance.

Intellectually Stimulating - the photograph provides something for you to consider and think about, including a situation/circumstance, concept/idea and/or an issue.

Emotionally Responsive - the photograph may cause us to feel a particular emotion and/or create a psychological state that we may feel