Stefan,
I was a bit schizophrenic yesterday or the day before, so hopefully I can be a little bit more clear with this critique.
First, sometimes it is difficult to interpret or deliver a critique even if you are in the room with the person. Keep in my mind my comments are meant to be positive NOT negative, and hopefully more helpful in nature.
My initial thought was I am wondering what your overall intent is with your photography? Is your photography just meant as hobby for you to experiment with the medium? Or is it something more serious and you are really trying to pursue a higher level career, like getting books published, exhibiting your work at major museums or galleries, working for a photo agency, receiving assignments? Or somewhere in between? Depending what your intent is my critique would be different.
For example if you tell me your intent is to just enjoy traveling, photograph a little, and put together a photo album for myself to serve as a memory or travel diary, then I would say the images are quite successful, and leave it at that. However, if your intent is something more serious in nature, and searching for something more profound, then about the daily life of Cuba, my critique would be a lot different.
I will offer a more in depth critique and hopefully one that will make better sense:
Editing:
I would edit your images down to 20 or less. Sometimes less is more. I feel that you have too many of the same images being represented too much, which makes the entire body of work redundant. You have some GREAT images, yet they are lost in the monotony of cars and murals. I would limit the number of cars that you show to one or two, and maybe one or two murals.
Content:
So, I read your response about my post. I did not search through your entire website or read anything that you wrote about your work in Cuba. I also did not look at any of your other work to see what you did prior to this. You posted about Cuba, I am just interested, at this moment, in your Cuba work. I will go back to search through your website as I do have an interest in your work. With that being said, I will start with what you wrote:
"There were no portraits on this project. Again, read the description. That does not mean I did not relate with the people. IS just that in most of my photographs, people are anonymous. For me, this means the universality for the emotions and contexts. It is more easy for me to relate to a situation or context if I can't identify the character. It is just my thing. I use to do a lot of portraits, like those in India. But the whole idea in Cuba is the ghost like atmosphere."
When I view your work from Cuba, I feel that there is a disconnect between you and the people. A lot of your images the people are not aware that you are photographing them, and the images feel a bit distant and indifferent; they are walking away from you, or you are photographing them as they walked passed you. I see a lot of side profiles, people in the deep shadow, or just you just photographing people where you cannot be seen.
I think your rhetoric about how it is easier to relate to a situation where you cannot identify the character is a cope out, and somewhat of an insult to the people of Cuba, or any person you are photographing. I really do. It sounds like you do not want to deal with them on more intimate or personal level, and instead, you are use them as a prop in your photographs. I am not saying that you are using people, but this is how I interpret when I read what you wrote. Maybe your work in India is different, but I only have the work from Cuba to see how you relate to people.
My other comment is that I am not sure what you mean when you say, "the universality of the emotions and contexts. Is just that in most of my photographs, people are anonymous." I tend to feel that you did not want the people to be anonymous, more like you wanted to be anonymous, or that you did not want people to know that you were photographing them, in hopes of capturing interesting moments, gestures, or interactions, but I don't see this in your images. I see interesting moments with light, saturation of color, a few graphic elements where the people make the scene more rich with the moment, but I do not see interesting interactions or gestures, up close, with just the people themselves, which makes me feel like you were not emotionally invested in this trip.
Also, I think you changed your Cuba site because I do not remember some of the other images that are now there. , the images that I think are successful are numbers 1, 4, 12, 14, 17, 22, 24, 32, 33, 34, and 35.
I would edit out numbers 7, 13, 20, 23, 26, 27.
The man slumped over wearing the hat and the man sleeping on the bench, I feel these images you sort of took advantage of them or their circumstances of them being unaware of you. The other images that I think, for me, just are not as strong either with the light, the formal elements, or how the images were framed, meaning that in a few of the images there are more distracting elements.
The cuban people are so sensual, where are these moments in your photographs, where the rich gestures, or the intense interactions?
This is a response to qualify my statements and what I meant in my earlier post. My comments are only meant to be positive and constructive in nature, NOT to be negative or de-constructive.
Just to qualify where I am coming from, photography is my passion, a serious, severe passion. I sacrifice almost everything for my photography and my photographic projects. My lifestyle is centered around my photography, and it is something that is apart of my core. Stating this may help in understanding where I am coming from when critiquing your work or anyone else's work. I have high standards for photography; with that being said I have far more failures than successes, but the successes have been amazing. In case you are wondering, yes I drive people around me crazy, yes I have lost a good relationship or two because I chose my photography over them, and yes i am my harshest critic. On the bright side, I have learned to keep the majority of comments to myself, not to say what I really think, which I do not think is always helpful, but realize some people do not really care about there work other than what it is, therefore, I am more selective when I do offer a critique.
Please do not take any of my comments personally, decide what you think is useful to you, leave behind what isn't, which may be everything. I am not the supreme authority on anything, not even my life, I am just passionate about a few things . . .
All my best . . . "S"
PS I did go back and look at the Cuba portfolio, I believe you changed it around a little, and your other work does have an emotional intensity like frame #55 among a few others . . .
