On October 19 and 20, New Haven CT looked much as it usually does - a classic blend of venerable buildings swathed in ivy, as if in the hope that the plant might function as an intellectual nutrient and prosaic urban malaise. The only visible anomalies were the canary-yellow posters, bearing a large eyeball logo, affixed to telephone poles and mail boxes. Thankfully, the eyeballs were hard to miss, for they led those interested through the maze of one-way streets and dead-ends to in Photographic Criticism, a conference sponsored by Yale University's Center for Independent Study and held in the Harkness Auditorium of the Yale Medical School. The choice of location had no connection with a recent diagnostic triumph concerning the pathological nature of photography. It was simply that Harkness was the biggest space Yale could offer that weekend, and according to Voices Director Mary Price, the organizers thought they would need it. An announcement of the conference last spring brought an unexpectedly enthusiastic response. By July, the planning committee (composed of Price, Roger Baldwin, Phyllis Crowley, Robert Herbert, Adrienne Munich, Tod Papageorge and Alan Trachtenberg), had to turn away potential registrants. In fact, even after moving the whole affair to a larger hall late in the summer, the committee arranged for an overflow crowd to watch the proceedings on video monitors in the hallways. As it turned out, the anticipated hordes didn't materialize. Harkness, which seats 450, was perhaps three-quarters full for most of the conference sessions. I understand now why the airlines overbook, 'r said Price. We had a lot of cancellations in the last week and it was simply too late by then to reach the people word turned away. The probable reason for the no-shows, sad to say, was that the conference was free, as stipulated by its funding source, the Connecticut Humanities Council. Nevertheless, at least until the number of empty seats became apparent, the instinctual human pleasure in having a ticket to a desirable event was definitely part of the occasion's ambulance. The audience, of course, had legitimate reasons to be excited about the conference, for the roster of scheduled speakers was impressive indeed Aided by suggestions from Trachtenberg (Professor of American Studies at Yale) and Herbert (Robert Lehman Professor of the History of Art at Yale), the organizers had invited a disparate group of critics and historians. They were Max Kozloff, author of Photography & Fascination; Charles Hagen, editor of Afterimage; Mark Roskill, author of What is Art History?; Mark Wartofsky, Professor of Philosophy at Boston University; Rosalind Krauss, co-editor of October, William Parker, Professor of Art History at the University of Connecticut at Storrs; Eugena Janis, Associate Professor of Art History at Wellesley College; Joel Snyder, Director of Chicago s Albumen Works and an historian of photography; the sociologists Erving Goffman and Howard Becker; Papageorge, Professor of Photography at Yale: Vicki Goldberg a freelance New York critic Ben Lifson of The Village Voice; and Trachtenberg. Speakers were limited to half an hour apiece to ensure time for questions from the audience. And for the most part, they kept to the allotted time, thus allowing worthwhile general discussions. From Friday morning on, it was abundantly evident that the questioning would be lively and the audience inclined to dialogue rather than polite applause for words of wisdom. Moreover, since the Voices committee had used a number of mailing lists to publicize the conference (Society for Photographic Education, the Hartford Arts Council and the Yale Art Gallery), it was soon clear that the questions came from people with differing relationships to photography. The realization came with some relief to those of us prone to believe, in our dour moments, that the host of contemporary voices in photographic criticism might be nothing but echoes reverberating through an unfortunate time warp. …