I'm writing portfolio evaluations this morning for a B&W class I taught this quarter, so the word "CRITIQUE" on the front page really jumped out at me.
Reading through the comments, it's pretty clear that there are so many different "genres" of critique that it's tough to know what context people are even coming from. But I'm surprised that the conversation is tipping toward a consensus that critiques aren't particularly helpful -- that, typically, they're given by myopic people who fixate on unimportant details, or even that they're nonsense and a waste of time.
Wow, how depressing! I think critique is crucial, both to give and to receive!
I run mine as a group critique. Students tack their pictures up on the wall. The class spends a few unstructured minutes wandering from print to print, so they can really get a close look, and then we regroup and focus on one person's work at a time. For ten or fifteen unbelievably long minutes. Most people have never spent this long looking at a photograph, probably wouldn't make it past the 60-second mark even if it were hanging in their living room.
If this is the group's first critique, it's usually dead silent for an asphyxiating few seconds, but then after a moment the comments begin trickling out of the group. They're typically content-free at first. "I like the expression on her face," is a good one. "Did you burn in the background?" is another. Then more silence, and it begins to look like the discussion is stillborn.
Critique can be an excruciatingly complex social thing -- students are worrying about leaving a negative impression on their new classmates, and at the same time, they don't want to invite harsh criticism of their own work when the spotlight's shifts to them, but if they flatly say they like it, and the rest of the class dislikes it, won't that be embarassing? So they stand there with their lips sealed. And further complicating the matter is that looking at artwork is a skill in itself! When asked to judge a photograph, many don't even know where to begin. Their eyes scan around the work, searching for something truly comment-worthy, but typically, nothing's jumping out.
So this moment of high tension and drama, where the critiquee's heart is pounding as silent people shift their gaze between the photo, their feet, the clock, slowly ticking the seconds off... this is the moment that the instructor steps in and begins to lead the discussion.
This is also the point where every instructor's critiquing style and philosophy begins to have an impact. My style is to simply work on showing people how to look.
"Does the woman stand out of the background?"
"Yeah," comes a response.
"Why?" I wonder out loud.
"She's a lot lighter than the background," one student notes.
"Yeah, and the background is blurry," ventures another.
"Okay," I say, "so those are the obvious reasons why. But there's a lot of punch to this photograph, right? Like, compare it to that one," I say, pointing at the photo next to it. Same subject, but the student framed it less carefully and shot from a different angle. "The background there is also dark and out-of-focus, but does it pop as much?"
The class briefly murmurs.
"The geometry is better," one student blurts, "the shape of the background pushes her forward." Bang. This is what I was trying to get at, but I didn't have to say it. The class murmurs again, a subdued chorus of Yeahs. They're beginning to see things they overlooked before, and now the real conversation finally begins. Topics surface: did the photographer mean to feature her ring so prominently? Why is she looking straight into the camera lens? Is this a confrontational photograph? Is body language important?
This isn't harsh criticism. This isn't about tearing people down and rebuilding them as Artists. It's about helping them learn to see and think.
At home, I compare notes with my SO (who's teaching a painting class at a different university) and she openly questions the systemic arrogance by which critique even exists, and chides me for unwittingly perpetuating the modernist view of photography by tossing some of the Old Masters into my slide carousel. She's only teasing, of course, but literature on art pedagogy is a dull roar that will reverberate among the ivory towers for the foreseeable future.
For my own work now I rely on a small set of people with whom I have creative relationships, because they are the people who know me and my work, and whose opinions I can easily contextualize. And to that end, I know that critique is something that has to come at exactly the right time. Too early into an idea and I feel hamstrung by suggestions, too late and I become frustrated.
And as a final note, this is the longest thing I've posted to RFF for ages and ages. I hope it wasn't a cumbersome read. 🙂
