THREE YEARS AGO two graduate students in photography wrote papers for me in which they attempted to apply the techniques of art analysis and criticism (morphology, connois seurship, etc.) to photographs. The results were disappointing. The students simply did not know how to make the techniques relevant to the analysis of photographs. My subsequent research into pho- tographic literature made it evident that my students were not alone: 1 discovered only a handful of writers who had written im portant, sustained, analytical criticism of individual photographs in the entire history of the medjuin. And, although I found a vast body of literature which deals with photographic esthetics, most of it is made obsolete by current developments in both photography and esthetics. The present study is thus offered to the reader as a modest attempt to assess the value of the various partisan positions in photographic esthetics and criticism and to offer my own sug gestions concerning what can be profitably written about meaning and value in photographs, I wish to thank Jerry Uelsmann, whose photographs are the main subject of my analysis, for lending me photographs and books and giving me his ideas, encouragement, and much time. I am i debted to my colleague Jack Flam, with whom I originally under- took this study as a joint venture, for his helpful ideas. Dr. T. Wa ter Herbert, Professor of English at the University of Florida, and Peter C. Bunnell, Curator of Photography at the Museum of Mod om Art, read the manuscript and suggested major changes which have improved it.