Well, well, well... thank you all!
Who needs a critique forum anymore?
That, Slobodan, is a very good question that travels well beyond LuLa.
After some years looking a these things, critiques, I can only conclude that they exist for the glorification of critic ego.
Nobody really has the slightest idea what exists in another person’s visual imagination. Attempts to “direct” that person’s art seem, beyond being obviously extremely arrogant, very dangerous to the progress of the person whose work is being criticised.
Poor old Picasso would not have enjoyed the fulfilled life that he did had he allowed his ear be bent by those who knew better than he about what he should do. Let’s face it: Vinnie van G actually
lost a part of his. Go figure.
On the sadder side, there are those whose living is actually earned by doing exactly the kind of thing I find so counterproductive. We don’t need teacher clones.
It has always been my contention that photography consists of two grand parts: the technical and the aesthetic. Nowadays, I think that the technical side needs, even more than before, really skilled practical help as early in a career (or simply interest) as that can be arranged. Despite being a reasonably able professional photographer and printer, finding my way around a computer felt very alien to me; it was only with the help of several individuals, some in and others outside LuLa and the late lamented BJP website, that I was finally able to understand the minimum that I needed to about basic Photoshop.
My interface with the teaching of professional photography ended the night I remarked to the tutor that I admired David Bailey’s oeuvre: the guy answered that if his stuff looked like Bailey’s he’d quit photography. I never went back. I don’t know what the other students did.
It’s only because some basic original thinking exists in the way some people execute their art that anything new ever happens. We should not permit those early flickers to be snuffed out at the alter of some critic’s ego. As the old song goes: leave the kids alone. Anybody who is going to progress is able to see what he or she likes in another’s work; that’s the key to the future, to what attracts and what might just provide the motivation to move onwards or even sideways, and to keep on fighting, because those battles never stop unless you do.
