I saw it as an argument, but thought I might be reading too much into it. I saw (and evaluated) it less as if it were supposed to be a stand-alone Great Street Photograph and more as if it were a frame from a movie, where it quickly captured a vivid slice of life.
IMO it's a mistake to decree that some aspects of images are necessarily 'mistakes' – overlapping figures (check out R. Frank), cut-off heads/feet, or whatever else. For me, the image has to work in the context it creates, not in relation to 'rules.'
Just my two cents,
Kirk
PS, Afterthoughts: To be specific, for heads/feet I was thinking of Frank's headless Bunker Hill guy, and his footless Jehovah's witness. But you get the feet back again, by themselves, in his Navy Yard office shot.
I wonder if concern for critiquing by-the-rules relates to how folks went about learning photography. In a critique 'collective' to which I belong, one person who went to a commercial art/photography school like Brooks seems quite sure there are Rules, for example 'No whited-out skies' (despite Carleton Watkins and Atget); whereas the folks who went to something more like an art school tend to think there aren't any rules, or if there are, they exist mostly to be broken.
If one started out learning or admiring the kinds of photography that earn money – products, portraits, weddings, architecture – there are not so much Rules as settled commercial expectations. In fashion, however, where the unexpected is rewarded, there've been famous rule-breakers like William Klein.
Thx to the folks who critiqued the pictures I put up. The most important message I got was that they didn't arouse a lot of interest, which is a very good critique in itself!
