What Makes Great Photography?

Thesis of Val Williams in her book of the same name. She is Professor of History and Culture of Photography, University of Arts, London

Photography has become an important way by which we can communicate our vision of the world. To have impact, an image must:

• hold attention and so be well-made, and 
• communicate its purpose to its intended audience and so take account of the culture and assumptions of photography by which it will be perceived

Photos succeed if they open a space for our imagination

Garry Winogrand, The Animals, 1969

This image works on several levels:

• It contains the mystery of the unexpected. The focal point is the figures in the box: from whom or what are they hiding? 
• It connects with our own experience: most of us have vivid cildhood memories of visits to zoos as places for entertainment 
• The image also has humour: the oddity of the humans is the spectacle here, not as expected the 
• exotic animals (as one might imply from the elephant's stare at the camera)

Photos succeed if they become more than the sum of the parts

Sand Dunes, Sunrise, Death Valley, Ansel Adams, 1948

• Theses parts are composition, cameracraft and interaction with subject. 
• Yet in Sand Dunes the whole exceeds the parts due to Adams' vision of making an image of nature in the abstract to fit his philosophy of photography and way of seeing, rather than an just appealing one (say) for a tourist brochure, 

Photos can succeed when the photographer is embedded in a community, location, group or type of people

Bricklayer, August Sander (1928)

• This image was part of Sander's project to document German people and their occupations. 
• The hod carrier represents all workers and a symbol of labour.  
• Pose, technique and viewpoint combine to make the image work

From the series Case History, Boris Mikhailov, (1997 - 8)

• Case History comprises c 400 photos shot in the city of Kharhov, documenting people living on the margins of society, a large number of whom were became homeless after the collapse of  communism
• Mikhailov photographs his subjects indoors, but there is no sense of home. 
• Here the naked woman stares with resignation into the camera in a coldly lit image. 
• The strength of the image comes partly from the subject, Mikhailov's intimate access to them and the positioning of the 3 figures, seemingly casual but cleverly placed within the frame 

The Landscape, Tina Barney (1988)

• Tina Barney photographs friends and family in their domestic surroundings
• Here the people are separate yet involved with each other. 
• All seem immersed in their separate activities. 
• Tension is hinted at but restrained by the banality of the scene.
• 'The longer you work together, the better you know each other, and the better the working situation develops. A lot of my subjects now feel as if they're collaborating with me, which is more fun than ever'

Photos can succeed because the photographer is detached from the subject

Visitor to Chelsea Flower Show, The English, Ian Berry (1975)

• The art of the documentary photographer is detachment: to see the situation, compose quickly and make the most of the suprise of the subject
• This image is such an example, as well as how documentarists use the everyday to communicate a sense of time and place
• Here the subject stands out of place from the homely throng that surrounds him and gazes at the camera at the decisive moment to deliver a mysterious, engaging stare

Circus, Budapest, Andre Kertesz, 1920

• This image is another example of the documentary photographer's detachment in action - the couple spying through a hole in the wall are unware of Kertesz's presence
• There is an event beyond this scene but he is happy to tell this story of curiosity and concentration
• This shows what can be accomplished by acute observation and images taken at speed
• 'For me the camera was a little notebook, a sketchbook. I photographed things that surrounded me - human beings, animals, peasants, the life around me. I always photographed what the moment told me'

Beyond Caring, Paul Graham (1984 - 5)

• Graham's images of unemployment offices in 1980s were made surreptitiously and this is part of their success, conveying a strong sense of boredom and despair, made at the time of Thatcher reform of the welfare system, the bleak interiors of the welfare offices epitomised the image of Britain in decline.
• The composition looks haphazard (back-board of the chair obscuring the view into the office, blown highlights), yet this supports the message.

Photos can succeed because the photographer pushes the medium beyond previous boundaries

Gold mines of Serra Pelado, Brazil, Sebastiao Salgado (1986)

• Salgado creted a new aesthetic in documentary journalism more akin to the film set than the standards prevailing at the time
• His style is dramatic, using form, texture and mass to give everyday scenes epic proportions
• This approach relies on creating narrative from real life
• The men move across the hillside of mud like a fluid crowd, absorbed in their labours, expect for the main subject, enigmatic in his withdrawal from the world around him
• 'What I want to create is a discussion about what is happening in the world and to provoke some debate with these pictures. Nothing more than this.'

Table of Power, Jacqueline Hassink (1994)

• Hassink re-interprets the studied banality of the corporate photograph to express her interest in the luxuriously bleak interiors of the business meeting place, making maps of power seen through empty chairs and giant tables
• 'I'm interested in spaces, in the psychology of rooms. It's quite fascinating to look around in the office of a powerful CEO'

Photos that succeed understand their audience

Living Dead of Buchenwald, Margaret Bourke-White (1945)

Dead SS Guard Floating in Canal, Dachau, Lee Miller (1945)

• Margaret Bourke-White was recording conditions at the end of Nazi rule for Life  magazine, so her audience expected hard hitting social reportage 
• Whereas Lee Miller knew that her immediately post war images would appear in Vogue, whose readers would be attuned to comtemporary fashion photography. In anticipation this image is reflects the aesthetic values of the magazine at that time.

Photos succeed truly when they achieve their purpose, however mundane

Barn Owl, Eric Hosking (1948)

From The Last Resort, Martin Parr (1986)

• Hosking's image was never intended as a work of art but to inform naturalists
• Martin Parr's photograph was part of his personal documentary of Britain in decay

Photos succeed above all when we remember them

Detail of a Coal Miner's Home, Walker Evans (1935)

Migrant Mother, Dorothea Lange (1936)

• When we think of the US Dust Bowl, the images of Walker Evans and/or Dorothea Lange come to mind