Re: A critique suggestion

I couldn't agree more. I'm not saying that you have to be a photographer or painter to be visually literate but I'd expect a higher proportion of visually literate in a group of painters or photographers than in a random selection from the general public. I'd also agree that much of what passes for discussion about photography in photo circles is about the tech and isn't related to the image as an image. As I've said before, photographers have much to gain in skills and pleasure in working with images from some time invested in studying painting. Not just painting, there are cross over points in appreciating the arts in general.

As has been said here over and over. What is being discussed has nothing to do with entitlement. You are entitled to believe the world is flat if you wish.
What makes an opinion worthwhile is what can be brought to support the opinion. Once again, you approach discussion as a competition. "Who decides what is visually competent" simply shows you have no grasp of what this is about.

Unless you post an answer to the question then there is no reason to believe you have a grasp either.

I posted the answer to that question - everyone is entitled to determine for themselves what they see as visually competent.

Perhaps you can post why in your opinion my answer to the question is not true.

It's when people who think they know more than they actually do try to create an illusion that their opinion is more valid or superior to others that conflicts arise.

In environments like forums like this you will get a variety of subjective opinions based on people's experiences, preferences, tastes etc.

People can then take those opinions for whatever they are worth to them.

OK let's try it another way.

I have become interested in the past couple of years in Medieval art. I was struck by what we call gargoyles, in some Romanesque churches I visited. To the casual visitor they are strange and cute, and often funny. Why do the same gestures turn up over and over again in Medieval frescoes? Who are the guys wearing conical hats? Why are we seeing a sort of cutaway picture of a Cathedral? Why are people depicted in different sizes, often with smaller figures in the foreground?

To us Medieval art is almost incompressible, primitive and strange. To the people at the time this art was made, this art was a storybook, and the illiterate peasant would be able to "read" the artwork. Perspective, real size and realism, were pretty unimportant. The symbolism was the thing that counted.

Jump to our present time and we have our own visual conventions that we expect to see in a photograph. Conventions as important as those found in Medieval art. Most of us are unaware of these conventions, but we follow them, mostly without knowing why, and we are not even aware that we are following them.

There are people who have some or a lot of knowlege concerning our visual language. These individuals are able to judge the worth and success of an image. They actually can decide for others.

Even those of use who are forced to judge, using mostly instinct, are able to say that a certain picture or the post processing of a picture is crap, if it does not comply with our unconsciously held conventions.

They can decide/judge for others only when asked to or permitted by someone for their own reasons, especially in photography forums.

Otherwise no-one is under any obligation to accept a judgement/decision someone is trying to impose on them.

People are entitled to judge for themselves if they choose to.

I posted my answer to that question.

Reading through this thread it seems to me that both MikeFewster's and NCV's inability to post their answer to that question means they both either agree with my answer - "No-one" - or they believe they have superior knowledge/understanding which enables them to decide for me and other people what must be accepted as a "visually competent picture".

Feel free to correct me if I am wrong.

If you read my last post it is perfectly clear who and why.

Ok but your who and why does not apply to me for the reasons I posted earlier and it certainly doesn’t apply to everyone.

Certainly. We have previously gone over these matters before. At one point I suggested we were blocking up a thread and I offered to take the discussion out of the thread to another location. You declined. I'm not going to bother again.

That's not true.

It does.

This is why conflicts arise - because you don't accept that I and everyone else are entitled to determine for ourselves what is or is not a "visually competent picture" to us.

You're entitled to an opinion of an image like me and everyone else, but that is all it will ever be to danhasleftforum, an opinion.

So write me a short story, say an easy murder mystery.

It's not just about being able to read but how to structure and how to engage the reader's imagination and attention.

Same with visual literacy, it's not about being able to look at something but how to structure a 2D plane and engage the audience's imagination and attention.

So draw me a simple 3D house but only use blocks of pastel colour, no lines. Arrange a series of colours into depth order, arrange two blocks of different colour so they appear to balance around a central fulcrum, or draw two simple figures, one at rest and the other running.

All simple visual principals.

In the same way that you can test English (other languages are available) literacy in exams so can you rate visual literacy. And like a good story is accessible to the general public so is a good picture. But just because you can see it does not make you an expert storyteller.

People don't need to be an expert in photography to determine for themselves if an image is visually competent or not for them.

I don't need any "experts" (self-proclaimed or otherwise) to decide for me whether I must like an image or not and the reasons behind it.

What did I write?

Even those of use who are forced to judge (the quality of a picture), using mostly instinct, are able to say that a certain picture or the post processing of a picture is crap, if it does not comply with our unconsciously held conventions.

I was replying to Andrew's post directly above mine.

What I said earlier is true, at least for me, and I suspect for many other people.

It is interesting to look at the history of photography with respect to what was said about particular images.

Here is Julia Margaret Cameron's 1867 photograph of Thomas Carlyle:

Published comments on her work at the time:

We must give this lady credit for daring originality, but at the expense of all other photographic qualities. A true artist would employ all the resources at his disposal, in whatever branch of art he might practise. In these pictures, all that is good in photography has been neglected and the shortcomings of the art are prominently exhibited. We are sorry to have to speak thus severely on the works of a lady, but we feel compelled to do so in the interest of the art.

What in the name of all the nitrate of silver that ever turned white into black have these pictures in common with good photography? Smudged, torn, dirty, undefined, and in some cases almost unreadable, there is hardly one of them that ought not to have been washed off the plate as soon as it appeared. We cannot but think that this lady's highly imaginative and artistic efforts might be supplemented by the judicious employment of a small boy with a wash leather, and a lens screwed a trifle less out of accurate definition.

The judgement of history has been very much kinder to Julia Margaret Cameron than to her critics. She is now considered one of the most important portrait photographers of her time!

An interesting sidestep.

I think this is a case of disputes between schools of thought. We know that artistic disputes are often very bitter.

Here is part of her biography, she was very much in line with a lot of western art.

Cameron was an educated and cultured woman; she was a Christian thinker familiar with medieval art, the Renaissance, and the Pre-Raphaelites.She may also have been influenced by the contemporary interest in phrenology, the study of the skull as a sign of a person's character. The Old Masters also informed her work. Her compositions and use of light have been connected to Raphael, Rembrandt, and Titian.

The Illustrated London News provided an alternative perspective, writing that her images were "the nearest approach to art, or rather the most bold and successful applications of the principles of fine-art to photography

All this is pretty normal in the history of the medium, where disputes between schools of thought have been countless.

She was certainly more visually literate, than the vast majority.