The language currently applied to photographs as distinct from other kinds of images is derived entirely from the jargon of technique; it is a form of shop talk which pertains to the manufacturing of photographs as objects rather than to their workings or effects as images. […]
|
|
It is impossible to discuss the “problems of photography criticism” as though they were clearly formulated and widely agreed-upon issues, consciously faced by a diversity of critics familiar with each other’s relative positions, and known to an audience engaged in active observation of critical interactions and the concepts emerging therefrom. This is very far indeed from being the case. […] For a lad still a tad, who had passed through and adapted himself to three linguistic environments — Manhattan, southern France, London, and then back to Manhattan — in three years, this came as music to the ears. That Joycean play with language, in a form accessible even to a sprat like me, heightened my consciousness in relation to the spoken and written word by making the very act of reading — not the experience of following a story line, but the savoring of language itself, its slipperiness and mutabiity, its multivalent possibilities — fun. […] I left the country just once this year, for the Athens Photo Festival in early June. Aside from that, I left New York City only twice, both times to receive awards — the first at the Society of Professional Journalists dinner at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, on the evening of June 26, for our team’s Capa D-Day project, the second to Philadelphia on November 7 for The Photo Review Award 2015. […] The dialogue which currently is most bitter but which promises to be most fruitful is that which engages the more specific question of how public monies for the arts should be allocated. Often foolish, dependably acrimonious, the interchange on this subject at least addresses matters more substantive. The hottest area of this debate — hottest, perhaps, because those under fire are those whose job is arguing in public over issues of art — is the Art Critics Fellowship program of the NEA. […] |
 SPJ Research Award 2014 |