Gordon Parks and the Farm Security Administration
For Black History month, I am featuring the work of four outstanding African-American Photographers. The first essay features Gordon Parks and his work at the Farm Security Administration.
History of Photography
Photography Visionaries
Photography Visionaries is a neat survey of 75 great photographers spanning the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries. Each photographer is represented by at least three of their best-known images, along with a concise, well-written and insightful summary of their significance. Each essay/biography is a stand-alone document, so that readers need not move through the book […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]