Criticizing Photographs on Photography Theory

At first glance, we can see that Richard Mosse and Xaviera Simmons took two very different approaches on documentary photography. Richard Mosse’s photograph of the refugee camp in Greece looks as if it is staged. The thermal camera he uses makes the people in the image look drawn or sketched. The use of lines in this photograph is something we, as viewers, are not used to seeing in documentary photography and it kind of plays with our minds. This image is seems a little too perfect and doesn’t make me feel like I am looking at a refugee camp at first glance. The first time I ever saw this image it took me a lot of time to dig deeper into what the image is actually trying to portray… after doing this, however, you are opened up to a much deeper meaning. This is a form of home for the refugees shown in the image and it is where we would normally see animals living, in the wild. Xaviera Simmons’ image has a very different feel. We know that this image is staged, yet it seems so perfect in the way everything is situated. Her use of black and white and color images helped me to relate with the artist personally because this shows how work proofs are imperfect and there is always room to improve. The fact that she photographed herself in this image stood out to me because you don’t often see this. Richard Mosse is an outsider looking into a space that he has no relation to and Xaviera Simmons made a space that she has no relation to something completely her own.


How are artists able to change the way the viewer reads their photographs?