A Glimpse of the City. Barcelona, 2014
[NOTE: As of October, 2022, Photo.net links in this post are no longer active. Saint Google might help with locating them if you are inclined to track them down.]
Today’s post is not really a critique. I have put my critiquing glasses on the shelf for now until the mood strikes me to pick them up again. It might be awhile.
What I would like to do instead is point you to a weekly online discussion that I find interesting and enlightening–discussions that border on photo critiques (so I’m not completely off the subject!) but also include small munchy morsels of history (often, the “rest of the story” type thing), philosophy, the art of seeing and catching the moment, and so on.
What I refer to is the weekly discussion on Photo.net in which an iconic photograph is presented–sometimes one we are all intimately familiar with–and an open exchange of comments, perspectives, opinions and ideas ensues. It is helping me expand my knowledge of the history of photography as well as my understanding of it as an art form. You might find it does the same for you.
To get there, go to the Casual Photo Conversations Forum and type WEEKLY DISCUSSION in the search box. The discussions are numbered…”WEEKLY DISCUSSION #9″, for example which is the most recent.
To save you some work, here are the links and the images chosen for the various discussions up until now::
–WEEKLY DISCUSSION #9 – The famous 1961 image of the young East German soldier in Berlin defecting to the west by hopping a low section of barbed wire. (It probably was in your high school history textbook.)
–WEEKLY DISCUSSION #8 – “Drum Major at the University of Michigan” (1950) by Alfred Eisenstaedt. Hilarious!
–WEEKLY DISCUSSION #7 – Harold Edgerton’s classic technological breakthrough–and somewhat artistic–image, “.30-Caliber Bullet Piercing an Apple“, made in 1964.
–WEEKLY DISCUSSION #6 – André Kertész’s image from 1926, “Chez Mondrian“. (One sold in 2005 for half a million dollars!)
–WEEKLY DISCUSSION #5 – A landscape (swampscape?) of Big Cypress Preserve, Everglades by noted Floridian photographer Clyde Butcher.
–WEEKLY DISCUSSION #4 – An image from the Pictorialist Movement: Eduard Steichen’s photograph of the Flatiron Building in New York (1904).
–WEEKLY DISCUSSION #3 – A night, rail yard, documentary photograph, with extensive and intricate lighting, by O. Winston Link, “Shaffers Crossing Roundhouse,” 1958.
–WEEKLY DISCUSSION #2 – “Alli, Annie, Hannah, and Berit, all 13, before the first big party of the seventh grade, Edina, Minnesota“, by Lauren Greenfield, published in her 2002 book “Girl Culture”.
–WEEKLY DISCUSSION #1 – A publicity photograph of Marlene Dietrich for the movie Shanghai Express, by Don English (photographer) and Josef von Sternberg (director), 1932.
A post-script: If you prefer a more traditional critique of non-iconic photographs, Photo.net also has that. Try their “Photograph of the Week” Forum for some great discussion about a selected member image. I find it very educational and fun to compare my reaction to a photograph with the reactions of those commenting. Heck, on a rare occasion, I’ll even chime in!
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