Posts
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
How to Read a History of Photography
I’ve discovered a secret about reading histories and criticisms of photography. It’s the internet. Almost every book on photography contains a disclaimer from the author that he or she regrets that the practical limits of publication means the book cannot possibly include enough images to give the reader a complete picture of the photographers and […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Buy this book and then read it again and again
The Nature of Photographs by Stephen Shore It’s hard to find good books that explore the nature of photography that are actually written by photographers. Stephen Shore is a modern master of photography. His book, The Nature of Photographs, proves that he’s a masterful writer on photography as well. It’s a brief volume. The actual […]
A Great, but Spectacularily Misnamed Book
How to Read a Photograph by Ian Jeffrey Ian Jeffrey’s survey of master photographers is thorough and thoughtful, even if the contents have little to do with the title. The book, published by Harry N. Abrams in 2008 (A new edition is now available), is actually a series of biographical sketches of great photographers, coupled […]
A Varied Collection
Photo:Box edited by Roberto Koch I’m not exactly sure what to say about Photo: Box (Abrams, 2009). Certainly it is an interesting and eclectic collection, well-printed and nicely designed. It is laid out with an image on the right side of each two page spread and on the other side, a brief description/discussion of the […]