Cataharine_Ficarra reading assignment #1

#1. Barron's thesis for chapter 2 is that a photo's description is just as important as the photo itself maybe even more important. It gives the viewers facts about the photograph as well as analysis of the photos.

#2. In this chapter Barron uses a number of examples of photos and their descriptions to prove his point. He uses "Thirteen year old Rattlesnake Skinner", Cindy Sherman's "Untitled Film Still #13" and Jan Groover's "Untitled" piece. He also uses quotes from the critics that created the descriptions of the pieces and what they were thinking as they we figuring out what to use as sources for the description. 

3a) Descriptions are normally paragraphs that lists facts about the piece of artwork. It will normally state the photographer's subject matter, for and media as well as a little bit about the time the photo was taken and information about the photographer. This information can either be from an internal or external source.

3b) Subject Matter is the actually thing that the photographer is photographing in the photo. The Subject is what the photographer is trying to get across when looking at the photo.

3c) Form is the way that the subject is coming to life or the "shape of the content."

3d) The medium is what the art is made of. This can be simple or complex.

3e) The style is a characteristic of a subject matter that will indicate a distinction between that artist and others.

4a) Comparing and contrasting according to barron is looking at an artist work and finding similarities and differences between that piece of work and another work of that artist or a different artist.

4b) An internal source is something that can be captured by looking at the photograph itself. An external source is when you go looking for a source in a a library, the artist themselves or a press release.

5a) The relationship between descriptions and interpretation is very circular and moving from whole to part and from part to whole. The person who is interpreting that picture will look at the description and the descriptions will persuade the critic to feel a certain way.

5b) The relationship between descriptions and evaluation is that the evaluations are almost always mixed into the description of the piece whether it be positive or negative. This making the evaluation visible for all to see. 

6a) I think the author of this chapter was trying to say that it isn't easy to write a description for a photograph and that there is a lot of thought that goes into creating one. The other though that i think they were trying to make was the idea that viewers will see this description and form an opinion about the piece so that critic writing the description must try their best to be as unbiased as possibly so that the view can form his/her own opinion.

6b) The one thing that I learned from this reading is that there is a lot that goes into the description of a photo. I just assumed that it was the last thing that was done and the artist did it super quickly to label their work when that's not the case at all. Seconding, I learned the different between subject and subject matter. I assumed that they were the same things and that there was just two different names for it.

6c)  The author's conclusion really put an emphasis on the fact that the description of a photo is no joke and that it should be taken very seriously. It should highlight the photo's individuality as well as give criticism. They then leave us with the principles for describing photos in hopes that someone will use it to write educated critics.

6d) I was a little surprised when reading the article especially because I though the artist wrote the descriptions for the photos were written by the artist themselves and not critics. I also didn't know there were so many rules and regulations to writing a critic. In my opinion it seems like a lot.