Exercise: A essay on reviewing photographs

This exercise asked me to review the essay Words and Pictures: On reviewing photographs by Liz Wells which is available in our course reader.

The basic argument in the essay is the difficulties faced by critics to accurately write about and analyse photographs and how their roles are changing due to the post modernist view of what is considered art.
I don't think that the title is a fair indication of the content of the essay as the title suggests that the essay is about the relationship between words and pictures and reviewing the photographs. The essay is really about the difficulties in reviewing photographs and photography collections with regard to the work itself, the photographer and the gallery, and how to put them into words to do them justice.
Wells discusses how books and gallery exhibitions make it difficult to adequately review the work being reviewed as the chosen pictures can be lacking the intensity of the work in general. Wells continues that the review left by the critic will long outlast the exhibition and leaves a mark on the photographer so the critic is under pressure to create an accurate account.
Wells explains the contrasts in writing about photography in different times and countries. Britain didn't accept photography as art until later in the century, allowing an overdue equal status. The post modernist view allows more freedom of expression, whether that be to the work of the photographer, the choices of the gallery or the opinion of the critic. The critics still have a responsibility but post modernism allows critics to be free from the conventional and be more opinionated, while still giving feedback to the galleries and photographers alike.
Wells identifies the relationship between the photographer, the gallery and the critic and how both the gallery and the photographer require acceptance from the critic but reviewing work is primarily about the particular judgement and passion of the critic.
I regards to qualifications, I don't think they should be a requirement but I do feel that a knowledge of photography and the practise of it are particularly relevant. I think critics should physically see what they are reviewing but I feel that experience is just as justified as an actual qualification. Not all photographers have studied photography, they are just passionate about what they practise and I feel that this should be the same for critics too.

This was a difficult essay for me to read. I had to read it at least 6 times just to make sense of it and I still didn't understand a big chunk of it, some parts may as well have been written in latin. So I have tried as best I can to understand these points and to make sense of them.