Barret Chapter 4
25 September 2017
This chapter seems to have been solely made for the purpose of explaining different categories of photographs. There are a few jabs at old categories and their creators, as well as different viewpoints on photography as art, but the bulk of the chapter breaks down different categories for photographs and backs them up with reasoned explanations and example photos. I do appreciate that the author advises the reader that these categories and their photos are subject to debate and disagreement due to their interpretive nature, as is all art. The descriptions are deep and well-explored, and the example photos do a good job of representing the base description of each category. It certainly doesn't hurt that each photograph is quite nice to look at.
What I found particularly interesting in this chapter was how these categories actually came about. It was fascinating to hear C. Jabez Hughes explain that, essentially, photography as an art form should limit itself in its manipulation and be almost, if not entirely, perfect when the picture is initially taken, thus leading to the idea of "Straight Photography". This perplexes me because no other art form really has this idea in mind. Books are always edited and revised and re-released with different covers or an addendum or editorial; movies are always edited in post-production and sometimes even during production and pre-production. Yet this guy expects photography to be perfect right out of the gate. I can't exactly disagree with this notion, as I'm still somewhat ignorant of photography as art, but I find myself very perplexed nonetheless.
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