Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, depending on what time of day you are reading this newsletter. Thank you ever so much for being here!

Have you ever been talking about painting and painters - Not house painting but people who paint landscapes or portraits, and heard somebody say the painting is only good because of who's in it or in the case of landscape scenes, the landscape that is being painted?
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That's what we're looking at today: the strange quirk we have in photography, where we often judge the success of an image by the subject being photographed.

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The Main Frame:

I once got a comment on a video I put out about Annie Leibovitz, and the commenter said that Annie was only famous because of the people she photographed.
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The commenter went on to say that the photographs were average, and it was the subject of the photographs that we were actually all gushing over.
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Now once upon a time, I had a similar idea
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I remember going to the National Portrait Gallery in London is a young photography student and standing in front of a photograph that Annie had taken of a blue surfer and seeing the photograph in person I kind of looked at it and went this is all right but there's no fancy techniques There's no demonstratable amazing skill that I even as a lonely student couldn't already do.
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and it helps if you read all of that back In the voice of an Opinionated teenager!
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Malcolm McLaren and Christian Fletcher, Point Dume, California, 1985/ Annie Leibovitz​
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what I kind of missed at the time, of course, is that I was not actually reacting to the photograph itself I was thinking about the subject of the photograph I was also looking for some crazy skills that I didn't have that would prove to me that and he was indeed a super talented photographer
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Now, please don't get me wrong, this is not a chance today for me to argue the case about whether or not Annie, and let's face it, most other celebrity photographers are good photographers or not it is more of a shift about how I started looking at different things in photographs beyond the subject matter that shape the way that my photography has played out to this day
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So a few years ago I was with a group of photographers visiting an exhibition of George Hurrell that was taking place in DC - And by the way, if you want to join me and some other photographers in Vienna during August, I will be running a three-day photography experience.
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Anyway, back to DC
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The reason I was looking at George Har is that I was first introduced to him once again as a student in an assignment where we were asked to look at the photographs from a technical standpoint the posing the sty and recreate those images now I didn any the people in the pictures I also didn't know George Har So wasn't there projecting my ideas about the photographs onto the images ideas that would be around thinking this photograph is Henry Cartier Bresson it must be amazing this photograph is by Ansel Adams it must be amazing
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We approached the photograph completely differently just because of the name attached to it.
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Strip all the baggage away all the name recognition something remarkable takes place We are then free as photographers to look at the photograph as a framework and in the case of George the lighting the framing the angles we stop asking who is this in this photograph and instead going What is this photo actually doing What is the photographer chosen to do that I like in this photograph that I could implement in my own?

The Curator's Gallery:

This week I want to play a little game. I'm going to give you some photographs without any photographers' names attached. Some of them you may recognise, some of them you may not. You may recognise some of the people in the images, but try to look at them as photographs rather than as photographs by a specific person.
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None of them just as a heads up are obscure photographers.
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Answers at the end of the letter
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The Weekly Observation:

The next time you see a photograph that you like don't try and find out who it's by if it's not credited or make judgments about the value of the photograph because of the photographer or the subject matter, but look into the image See what's hiding there for you to discover that you can put into play in your own work.
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Inside the Tribe:

A large part of being able to decide or indeed figure out what it is that you like within photographs comes down to the ability to actually see what's in them.
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Every second Wednesday within the TPE tribe, we have a collective feedback session where we look at a couple of photographs that have been posted by tribe members and then use the feedback framework to dig into those images to find out what works and what doesn't work and then give us a clearer picture about where improvements can be made within the image.
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You can also use this framework to find out what it is that you like about photographs, even if you can't put your finger on it
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Here is a recording of a recent session
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​You can download the framework guide here​
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I do hope you find that framework helpful. Thank you so much for being here today. It's an absolute pleasure to have you, and if you have any thoughts, please feel free to drop me a message
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Alex.
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P.S
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The photos in order:
Irving Penn
edward Weston
Edward Steichen
André Kertész
Garry Winogrand
Joel Meyerowitz
Michael Kenna
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P.P.S
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Everything in this letter has been about looking at other people's photographs and asking, "What's actually working here?"

The Vienna workshop in August is three days of turning that same question on your own work. It's much harder to do alone — we're all carrying our own baggage about our own images, the same way I was carrying mine in front of that Annie Leibovitz print.

A small group, looking properly, sees what we can't individually.
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Ten places only,14–16 August 2026, Vienna
Details here: thephotographiceye.info/vienna-workshop​
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