Judging Photography - a humanistic approach

Published by Ken Scott on 4th July 2007, 23:21: Tag Judging, Psychology, Photography

I am privileged to be invited regularly to judge at camera clubs around the country, and it is something I care about greatly. My motivation is not to stand in judgement but to take the role of a coach, to help photographers to develop, to grow and to improve through constructive appraisal; hence my dislike of the term ‘judging’. One of the most influential psychologists of the last century, Carl Rogers, proposed that there are three conditions that must be present in any growth-promoting relationship. I’ve been thinking about these in the context of appraising photographs with an audience, and I’ll consider them one by one.

Congruence
To be congruent means to be genuine or real, to reveal myself with no ‘professional’ façade. In making a comment about an image, therefore, I have to be aware of the feelings a picture evokes for ME and to express those feelings. This could cause difficulties, because many people believe that judges should be objective. Total objectivity, of course, would require me to turn off this human part of myself, so we might as well have a machine do our judging – something I’ve often referred to as ‘judging by numbers’. Congruence requires subjectivity, but expressed in a caring way. This is where the second condition comes in.

Caring
Rogers called this condition ‘unconditional positive regard’, and so when I am expressing personal feelings, which may include ‘I don’t like this image, because …’ I should make it very clear that it is ‘I’ who has this feeling about the image, and that I totally respect the photographer. I must also find something good and encouraging to say about every image; destructive criticism has no place in any situation. I cannot apply the final condition without being caring.

Empathy
The third condition is perhaps the most difficult. Empathy means to sense accurately the meanings, intentions and feelings of the other person – the photographer in our case. However, trying to ‘get inside the head of the photographer’ is fraught with danger, particularly if I use language that is too categorical. It is risky too, for I might get it wrong. If I do, then congruence helps me; if I get it right, the photographer almost always thanks me, for people love to feel heard and understood. I also need to understand how the photographer might be feeling, now, as her image comes up for me to appraise. So I talk to everyone in the audience as though I am speaking one to one - I try to ‘be with’ them.

Of course, it helps my credibility to have a level of photographic knowledge. However, I contend that someone with no photography knowledge at all, someone who is able to articulate what they like or don’t like about a picture in this ‘person-centred’ way, could give an appraisal that we would all be delighted by.

Communication is everything.

… Ken Scott

July 4th, 2007




2 Responses to “Judging Photography - a humanistic approach”

  1. Graham Smith has this to say:
    12th July 2007 at 9:21

    Graham Smith wrote:
    I was very interested in what you wrote, since … it relates very closely to the way in which I work, having done 2 sets of Counselling training.
    One small point about the non-photographer judge/appraiser. There must be a reasonable technical aspect to an image. The person working at the congruency/empathy level, but lacking any understanding of the sine qua nons of photography might ignore the latter, and make overly-controversial choices.
    I once listened to an appraisal of a children’s Art Competition, with lots of large colourful, cute images, and one HB pencil drawing which was the winner. On this occasion, as I now see, the judge had seen the wonderful merits of the drawing, which I misperceived as inferior, with my then knowledge. It is possible to choose photographic images in a similar spirit - indeed there are some now showing at the RA Summer Exhibition, but some there do not make me happy, and a Camera Club membership would be even less so.
    It is a minefield, but a very interesting one.

    … Graham

  2. Ken Scott has this to say:
    12th July 2007 at 9:23

    Cheers Graham. I agree of course, and the weight given to content over technicalities is the subject of another piece - the Eddy Sethna article we read a while ago. I think, though, that if an appraisal truly meets the Rogerian conditions then the owner of the appraised work will feel heard and understood, and will therefore hear and understand the reasons for the expressed preferences.

    My favourite photography quotation came from Ansel Adams: “there is nothing worse than a sharp image of a fuzzy concept …”

    … Ken