First, the critic identifies the medium and determines its unique options. Then, the theorist or critic evaluates the ways by which those distinctive features can generate artistic experiences. Alternately, one can have interaction in a critical investigation of labor that makes use of the unique features of the medium in order to articulate how new inventive potentialities are being generated. Baudelaire’s dismissal of photography’s potential for artistic worth exemplifies the first chance. Benjamin’s critical examination of Atget’s work exemplifies the latter. Those who argued that pictures could be art typically took two traces of response.
The chapters are uniform of…