For a brief time—say, from Stieglitz through the reign of Weston—it appeared
that a solid point of view had been erected with which to evaluate photographs:
impeccable lighting, skill of composition, clarity of subject, precision of
focus, perfection of print quality. But this position, generally thought of as
Westonian—essentially technical criteria for what makes a photograph good—is now
bankrupt. (Weston’s deprecating appraisal of the great Atget as “not a fine
technician” shows its limitations.) What position has replaced Weston’s? A much
more inclusive one, with criteria which shift the center of judgment from the
individual photograph, considered as a finished object, to the photograph
considered as an example of “photographic seeing.” What is meant by photographic
seeing would hardly exclude Weston’s work but it would also include a large
number of anonymous, unposed, crudely lit, asymmetrically composed photographs
formerly dismissed for their lack of composition. The new position aims to
liberate photography, as art, from the oppressive standards of technical
perfection; to liberate photography from beauty, too. It opens up the
possibility of a global taste, in which no subject (or absence of subject), no
technique (or absence of technique) disqualifies a photograph.
