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Beauty in Photography

Is Robert Adams the finest writer on photography?

Beauty in Photography, Robert Adams, Aperture The measure of a great essay is that after one reads it, there is simply nothing more to say. That is my reaction to Robert Adams’ Beauty in Photography. I have read it and re-read it. I want to comment on it, but frankly, I find it difficult to […]
Photography the Key Concepts

Striving for Art

Photography, the Key Concepts by David Bate, Berg Publishers Where exactly does photography fit into the world of art? That photography is, or can be, “art” has been a settled question for a century or more. Far more difficult to answer is: what sorts of photographs are “art.” And, who is it that determines the […]
Disappearing Witness

In Search of Things as They Are

Disappearing Witness by Gretchen Garner. Johns Hopkins University Press. Gretchen Garner thinks documentary photography contributes something that is worth preserving. For much of the 20th Century,  that would have seemed like a ridiculously self-evident perspective. Documentary photography, or more precisely, what Garner refers to as spontaneous witness, dominated photography for most of the past century […]
Photography After Frank

Two Languages: Words and Pictures

Philip Gefter, Photography After Frank. “Many people approach the act of looking at photographs with an inherent blind spot. They need to know what it is before they can appreciate how it looks.” For me this statement, and the essay it is from, would alone have made reading Philip Gefter’s “Photography After Frank” worthwhile.  It […]

On Topographics, Street Photogaphy and Lewis Sullivan

Perhaps it’s just me. But when I visited three separate exhibitions and a single piece in the Modern Wing of the Art Institute of Chicago they meshed into a larger reflection on the context,  connections and cross-pollinating influences of street photography and “New Topographics.” At the center is an exhibit of Lewis Baltz’s Prototypes which […]
History of Photography Newhall

Thinking about Beaumont

The History of Photography by Beaumont Newhall. The Museum of Modern Art (1982 Edition) Beaumont Newhall’s History of Photography is so much a part of the history that it documents that it can be hard to read it today and evaluate the book on its own merits. I first read Newhall’s history more than 35 […]
American Photography Orvell

A Narrative of Paradigms

American Photography by Miles Orvell, Oxford History of Art Series. In his introduction, Miles Orvell sets out a challenge for himself: to tell the history of photography in America as “a narrative of successive paradigms, rather than a string of masterpieces.” Presumably, by doing so, Orvell – Professor of English and American Studies at Temple […]
The Photograph Graham Clarke

Oxford History’s thought-provoking review of photography

The Photograph by Graham Clarke The Photograph by Graham Clarke is the first of three planned books on photography in the Oxford History of Art series. The second is American Photography by Miles Orvell. Sadly, the third volume, Contemporary Photography, has never been published. I was immediately disarmed when I started this book and read […]
World History of Photography Rosenblum

An accessible and entertaining history

A World History of Photography by Naomi Rosenblum. Don’t be intimidated by Naomi Rosenblum’s 640-page history of photography. It’s surprisingly accessible and unpretentious. It’s a long, but easy, read for anyone who wants to understand photography and photographers in context. In fact, it’s the context that I appreciate about this work. Rosenblum’s 12 chapters, three […]
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