The Photographic Community - who can I reference?

With regards to your academic studies, the Photographic Community would consist of the following types. Just watch out for bloggers see the notes at the end.

Practitioners - This is fairly grey area. There are hundreds of thousands of exceptionally good practicing photographers that make a very good living through taking exceptionally well executed images. But...  their work is derivative and inconsequential in that, no-one for the most part has ever looked at the work and reviewed it saying that it is worthy of note. The people you need to be looking at on the other-hand are those that have caused the photographic community to sit up and say "This work is important, different, unusual, contemporary and worthy of note".

Academics - These will be people that have studied photography and have written about photography and will be qualified up to a high level PHD, MA and would have had their work/commentary published within Hard-Copy sources or on websites that are instantly recognised as being valid.

Critics - These will need to be established critics, who write for established hard-copy publications or website/blogs with credibility (See below).

Reviewers - (As above).

Curators - These need to be people that work for larger more established galleries, not your town gallery unless of course if you do further research into the individual involved and find they have an MA/PHD in art or Photography and have had their work published themselves.

Writers - These need to be people that work for larger more publishing groups, not your town gallery unless of course if you do further research into the individual involved and find they have an MA/PHD in art or Photography and have had their work published themselves.

Editors - Again, if these people work for (Professional) recognised and established hard-copy journals, publishing groups or very well established blogs or websites,  they're going to be valid.

You need to be very careful about who you reference in your work, the easiest way is to simply use Hard-Copy Journals such as The BJP, Portfolio, Eight, Hotshoe, Image etc or published books. (Be careful about using short-run 'Photo-books').

Blogs and Websites

It goes without saying that websites such as that of National Newspapers, photographic Journals, national galleries, municipal and well established regional galleries are run by people with some knowledge of their subject area, or they employ people to write for them who are trusted and whose opinions you can use within your work. Anything else needs to be viewed with suspicion. You will have seen how easy it is to set up a blog and put yourself into the position of being a Blog Publisher - able to voice your opinion and distribute your images throughout the world. Many people do this giving the impression that what they say is of some consequence and has the support of years of studying and practice in that field. Using these people as research material is useless.

Professionals

Again when you consider using someone for your referencing/research - think about whether they are professional, e.g. do they get paid for writing about photography, is that a key part of what they do? Or are they an ex graduate who works in Top-Shop and runs a blog off his/her I-Phone 4?

Easy Option

The easy option is to use the library and access the hard-copy BJP's. Take some time to look through all the copies that we've got, look at the images, read the articles, make notes, photo-copy or just remember what's in there. Everything that's in there is valid, if it's in the BJP it's of some consequence either historically or contemporarily,