So far, we've spent our time paying close attention to the description and formal analysis of an anonymous photograph. We've done so in order to glean from it all the available data it has to offer. Our task now is to convert that data into information -- to inform, or give form to, that data -- by constructing an interpretation of the photograph that's consonant with whatever data we've gathered, and only then to evaluate it.

When my students or workshop participants and I look over the first spontaneous responses they made to the "found" photographs I assigned to them, we find that most of them tended to plunge immediately into interpretation (and, almost as often, into evaluation as well) without making much if any effort to subject the photograph to any description or formal analysis. This suggests a tendency on their part to make what a general semanticist would call "uncritical inferences" in their relation to photographs generally, and to make snap judgments of them -- which, inevitably, means to evaluate on the basis of prejudices.

The reason I insist on paying close attention to any given photograph as both image and object is this: those interpretations and evaluations that will prove most persuasive, resonant and useful will be those that are grounded in and built on internal evidence found in the work itself, that result from reading things out from the work rather than reading things into it. Any work of art -- or, more broadly, any act of communication -- is not merely an empty vessel into which we're free to pour whatever thoughts and feelings we happen to be carrying around at the moment. Careful scrutiny of the specifics of the image and the object often leads to unexpected insights into the image; additionally, it serves to keep a tight rein on the respondents' tendency to project their own attitudes toward the literal subject matter onto the photograph and its maker.

What we're looking for, instead, is a sense of the photographer's attitude toward his or her subject matter, as manifested in the photograph itself: How did the photographer think and feel about what was in front of the lens? So the first level of interpretation that I require from participants involves their determination of the probable nature and purpose of the picture they're working with, based strictly on whatever they've gleaned from it through description and formal analysis. I call this the "most-likely-case scenario" of the picture's production. The principle of Occam's razor applies here. What is the simplest and most encompassing explanation for this image-object, that which takes into account everything that's been noted of significance about it and is not contradicted by any of the internal evidence?

What we're looking for now is not what the photograph is of (which we determined earlier, via description), but what it's about -- not its contents, but its content. Because we can't verify our assumptions, I urge students to write in the conditional (seems to be, appears to be, suggests, etc.) rather than the absolute (is), and to qualify their statements as opinion. In the instance of the image we're using to illustrate this series of articles, it would be reasonable to suggest the following as an interpretive hypothesis:

• The photograph appears to have been made on Polaroid b&w film, using a Polaroid-Land Instant Camera, sometime between 1947 and 1970.
• The boxy design of the car in the background suggests the mid- to late 1960s.
• The photographer, who truncated the figure on the right abruptly, left fingerprints on the left side of the image in the still-wet emulsion, and coated the print unevenly with the fixative, may have been an inexperienced amateur photographer, and in any case does not appear to have been familiar with this particular technology.
• The picture was probably made in a suburban or small-town environment in the fall or spring, in warm weather, and in the daytime.
• Its primary literal subject seems to be the two men who occupy the bulk of the frame and are closest to the picture plane.
• Its content -- that is, its central issue -- appears to be the relationship between them, suggested by their proximity to each other; comparison between them physically -- age difference, balding patterns, ear shapes, body types -- suggests that they may be related, possibly father and son.
• Given the nature of the equipment used, the fact that the photograph is posed, the subject matter, the apparently relaxed body language and smiles of the two men, and the camera's proximity to them, the photographer may be a relative or close friend.
• Therefore, this image is most likely an amateur-made family-album snapshot of two related men of different generations, perhaps a father and son, who know and like the photographer and are pleased to be together, made by a member of the family, sometime between 1965 and 1970.

That's not the only possible interpetation of this picture, by any means; but the only thing that could impeach any part of it in terms of internal evidence would be the accurate dating of that model of car (not my area of expertise) or an analysis from the manufacturer of the film indicating that this was a forged version of their materials. As part of the exercise, I encourage my students to devise other possible interpretations, and do not frown on the merely different (uncle and nephew), the fanciful (return of the prodigal son to the family after years of absence), the far-fetched (father-and-son burglary team celebrating their latest score with a Sunday cook-out) or even the highly improbable (aliens disguised as humans are surprised by intrepid photojournalist who grabs a handy camera to document their arrival on earth). Nothing in the picture, or in the nature of the object, contradicts any of those stories; but nothing specifically supports them in any way. And I think it's essential that we recognize the difference between an interpretation grounded in internal evidence and one that's haphazard or purely a flight of whimsy.

What we're doing here is making meaning: using everything that the photograph offers us, fitting its pieces together to construct a story about it that sits comfortably alongside it. We begin our interpretation on the level of what the literary critic Kenneth Burke calls the "semantics" of the image-object, its literal level of communication; and we're then free to move to the level of its "poetics," if we find that it can indeed sustain a metaphorical interpretation -- and especially if it seems meant to fuction that way. Whether mundane or wildly imaginative, the interpretation(s) that convince and stick in the memory, in my experience, seem to emerge organically from the photograph itself and, because they're so closely tied to what we all can see there, become inseparable from it.

In similar fashion, evaluation of the work in question properly begins with a weighing of it on its own terms. That is to say, if we've agreed that this is most likely a family-album snapshot intended to remind an inner circle of a father and son's physical resemblance and sense of comfortable kinship with each other, then we hold it to the standards of that genre. So we'd probably also agree that -- despite the younger man's missing elbow, the thumbprints and the patch of mixed fixative -- it succeeds reasonably well as such: the pair are in focus, recognizable, and nicely juxtaposed for comparison.

Does that make it a "good" picture? I think that's a meaningless question, to which I'd respond with a question of my own: Good for what purpose? That is, according to what standard(s) are you evaluating it, and what is your rationale for applying those standards to this particular work? There's nothing wrong with announcing that this photograph fails as art, but that has about as much utility, relevance and newsworthiness as stating that my shopping list reads as bad poetry. Not every photograph needs to aspire to -- much less enter -- the field of ideas we call art. It may operate quite successfully (or fail utterly!) as family-album mnemonic device, official documentation, commercial portraiture, or a number of other photographic forms and functions. (There's even such a thing as a bad shopping list, as we all have discovered now and again.)

From the internal evidence, this picture gives no sign of having been created to communicate as an autonomous artwork; it has other purposes, and we have an obligation to assess it in that light. We can, of course, still contrast it to deliberately poeticized work on the same subject: Emmet Gowin's photographs of his family, say, or Sally Mann's of hers. But we must recognize that in doing so we're comparing the proverbial apples and oranges.

More appropriately, we can compare it to other works of its kind in photography. That is, we can consider its quality as an example of amateur-generated family-snapshot images, and assess how, even within the standards of that genre, it succeeds in some ways, as noted earlier, yet fails in others: the distracting clutter of shrubbery and trees behind them, for example, or the angle and glare of light that makes them both squint and obscures parts of the younger man's face.

We might also fruitfully compare it with parallel material from other media: casual commentary on family matters in diaries and letters, for example, the equivalent in amateur-produced prose of such prosaic photography. Some such material is boring or even meaningless to anyone outside its circle of influence; other examples are resonant, sometimes because its author manifested some real insight and sometimes despite itself. Does this photograph offer any food for thought in that regard? In that context, we could state (if we felt that way) that it contains little or nothing to catch or hold the interest of anyone who doesn't know its subjects.

Finally -- and I require my collaborators on this exercise to leave this for the very last -- how does this photograph strike you, as an autonomous, unique respondent to it? Would you have come back to it again, if the exercise hadn't required you to? Does it appeal to you in some way, engage you, resonate? Was it worth spending time with? Do you like it?

Curiously, by the time they've worked their way through this exercise that last set of questions strikes people as far less urgent than they did at the outset. Often, they've reversed their earlier judgment of the photograph they've worked with -- and, almost always, changed or elaborated their interpretation of it in important ways.

Naturally, just the investment of time this exercise requires (especially when spread out over a semester) can breed a certain fondness in people for the image assigned to them: work hard on anything, unfold its layers, live with it for a spell, and you develop a relationship to it. I request the return of the photographs at the end of the exercise; and I've had students ask me if they can keep the one I inflicted on them, as it's come to have some deeper significance for them. (I usually consent, but require a swap for an equivalent image of their choosing.) I've also had participants tell me that the picture they worked with stayed humdrum all the way to the end. But, with few exceptions, they've all told me that going through this process changed profoundly the way they attended to photographs of all kinds -- and, in more than a few cases, gave them a grounding in critical thinking they felt they could apply to other issues in their lives. What teacher could ask for more than that?