AMERICANSUBURB X: THEORY - "The Treacherous Medium: Why Photography Critics Hate Photog... - 0 views
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paul lowe on 19 Feb 09THEORY - "The Treacherous Medium: Why Photography Critics Hate Photographs " The Treacherous Medium: Why photography critics hate photographs Boston Review, by Susie Linfield In 1846, Charles Baudelaire wrote a little essay called "What is the Good of Criticism?" This is a question that virtually every critic asks herself at some point, and that some have answered with hopelessness, despair, even self-loathing. Baudelaire didn't think that criticism would save the world, but he didn't think it was a worthless pursuit, either. For Baudelaire, criticism was the synthesis of thought and feeling: in criticism, Baudelaire wrote, "passion … raises reason to new heights." A few years later, he would explain that through criticism he sought "to transform my pleasure into knowledge"-a pithy, excellent description of critical practice. Baudelaire's American contemporary Margaret Fuller held a similar view; as she put it, the critic teaches us "to love wisely what we before loved well."