Reading Assessment 2 "Interpreting Photographs"

1. The author's thesis is to tell us the different steps when interpreting a photograph.

2. The author gives us many examples to support his thesis, he shows us many pieces of work by different photographers and explains us what critics say about their work.

3. He defines interpretation as something to "make sense out of", he adds that it is also about telling the point, the mood, and find the sense.

4. According to the author, interpretation is important when criticizing a photograph because it helps to make sense out of it, "it gives voice to signs that don't speak their own". Barrett also adds that to interpret a photograph is to tell someone else what one understands about a photograph and what one thinks about one.

5. While giving his different examples of various interpretations, the one that stood out the most to me was "interpretive strategies". In this paragraph, Barrett wrote a passage entitle "biographical interpretation", where he explains how each photograph's life experiences has a relation with how their pictures look like. I find this very interesting because this is why I am interested in art and photography, each artwork will always be different since we are all different people.

6. In this paragraph, the author tells us how interpretations are always different, some might be true and some might be wrong. Interpretation is also something that can be learn but everyone will always have their own opinions wether we like it or not.  

7. The main points of this section were that critics must find each photographer's intend when criticizing their work. They must find out if the artists did a good job expressing his/her intend in hi/her work. The author adds that some photographers are unaware of their intends, but sometimes it comes unconsciously to them. The last point Barrett made in this section was that the interpretative part should also be more on the viewers than on the photographer.

8.The first point that I learned was what it takes to interpret an image, all the questions we should ask ourselves and every details it takes to find the perfect meaning of a picture.  Another point I learned from this reading,  was how each artist sometimes creates an unconscious meaning, indeed I one time had shot a specific image and without really realizing it had a deeper meaning that I intended it to have, I found this quite interesting.

9. In conclusion,  the author made many points in his chapter: the different steps to correctly interpret and image and the different photographers he used as examples to support his points, he also explained us some key points such as the difference between significance and meaning, and finally the artist's intends and how it plays an important role in the critics world.