Monday, July 11th, 2011
PHOTOGRAPHY, A Very Short Introduction
by Steve Edwards
160 pages
$8.95 BUY
I have a real thing for small books that come in series. (The Penguin Great Ideas books are, at the moment, my real obsession.) It was this love, in general, that led me first to notice, then to covet and promptly lift* from a close friend’s book shelf a copy of Photography by Steve Edwards, published by Oxford University Press as part of their intelligent (though not as visually exciting as Penguin’s) A Very Short Introduction series. I’m so glad I did.
Not only is Photography by Edwards (Oxford University Press, 2006) small and (part of a series), but it’s by far the most brilliant short—very short—introduction to a topic as broad, culturally impactful and deeply loved and debated as photography. Not to mention it’s my own field.
“Trying to account for photography as a whole [John Tagg] suggested, was akin to attempting a history, or a museum, of writing: all that could be done was to trace the uses of photography (or writing) in the institutions in which it was put to work—the law courts, medicine, advertising, art, and so forth.”— p. xi
Edwards, who I was not familiar with but who has authored various critical histories, is a lecturer at London’s Open University. His Very Short Introduction is wildly ambitious as well as perfectly succinct, qualities that he deftly weaves together.
He takes “photography” at its broadest, accounting for the commercial, institutional and popular uses of the medium as well as the issues underpinning what we have come to call “art” and “documentary” photography. It is not a comprehensive accounting, but admittedly so. With a scant 24 illustrations in this 160-page book, I found myself thoroughly engaged—the more I mark up a book, the more I can tell that I want to participate in the dialogue.
Photography is structured into 6 chapters, with a brief afterword to address digital photography: 1) Forgetting Photography, 2) Documents, 3) Pictures, 4) What is a photograph?, 5) The apparatus and its image, 6) Fantasy and remembrance.
“In 1864, Dr. Hugh Diamond—editor of The Photographic Journal, and pioneer photographer of mental illness—wrote the report on the International Exhibition of 1862. In this assessment of the state of photography, he claimed there was ‘scarce a branch of art, of science, of economics, or indeed of human interest in its widest application, in which the applications of this art [photography] have note been made useful.’”
He goes on to list ethnology, natural history, microscopy, archaeology, antiquary, history, architecture, engineering, law, manufacturing and astronomy as fields affected by photography.
The approach Edwards adopts early on is to look at the invention/emergence of photography in the broadest possible terms, and to identify the ideologies and cultural frameworks that underlie both the beginnings of photographic image-making and the current cultural approaches. He is most adept at delineating histories of debate surrounding “documents” and “pictures”, ie documentary photography vs. fine-art photography (and how the argument is essentially moot).
The book is brilliantly structured and would work well for any seminar-type class for photographers at either an undergraduate or graduate level (with the structure lending itself for supplementary material).
Best, Darius
* Of course I’ll replace it, since it’s widely available. But this should serve as fair warning to all hosts that invite me for dinner…;)
Purchase on Amazon
Tags: Oxford University Press, Steve Edwards
Posted in Art + Film + Design + Architecture, Blog, Book Review, Photography | 1 Comment »
Monday, April 4th, 2011
Phil Underdown, a photographer from Upstate New York (who was my curator’s choice for last years’ Hey, Hot Shot! competition, and who also received an Honorable Mention at the 2010 Photography Book Now competition), just sent me some photographs of his dummy for the series Trapper’s Lament. He made the book using MagCloud (HP Indigo press print-on-demand technology) to print the signatures, and then bound them by hand in a fairly straight forward binding, using inkjet canvas on the hardcover. It is a brilliant use of old and new technologies to self-publish. Bravo, Phil!
Tags: HHS!, MagCloud, Phil Underdown, Photography Book Now
Posted in Blog, Book Review, Photography | No Comments »
Sunday, November 14th, 2010
Publish Your Photography Book, by Darius D. Himes & Mary Virginia Swanson
Princeton Architectural Press
ISBN 9781568988832
7 x 9 inches (17.8 x 22.9 cm), Paperback, 224 pages
25 color illustrations ; 50 b/w illustrations
Coming Soon (publication date 1/17/2011) Watch this blog for more info!
$29.95 £18.99
From the Princeton Architectural Press website:
We live in the golden age of the photography book. Since the early 1990s, the number of photography book publishers has continued to grow while technological developments have placed more tools for bookmaking directly in the hands of photographers. For the students and working artists who have chosen photography as their primary means of expression, having their own photography book is seen as a passport to the international photography scene. Yet, few have more than a tentative grasp of the component parts of a book, an understanding of what they want to express, or the know-how needed to get a book published. Publish Your Photography Book is the first book to demystify the process of producing and publishing a book of photographs. Industry insiders Darius D. Himes and Mary Virginia Swanson survey the current landscape of photography book publishing and point out the many avenues to pursue and pitfalls to avoid. This expert guide is organized in six sections covering the rich history of the photo book; an overview of the publishing industry; an intimate look at the process of making a book; a close review of how to market a photo book; a section on case studies, built around discussions and interviews with published photographers; and a final section presenting a wealth of resources and information to aid in the understanding of the publishing world. Publish Your Photography Book also includes a number of additional interviews and contributions from industry professionals, including artists, publishers, designers, packagers, editors, and other industry experts who openly share their publishing experiences.
Darius Himes was a founding editor of photo-eye Booklist and is a cofounder of Radius Books, a nonprofit company publishing books on the visual arts. Himes is also a lecturer, consultant, and writer who has contributed to numerous publications.
Mary Virginia Swanson is a consultant in the area of licensing and marketing fine-art photography. Swanson frequently lectures and conducts workshops and educational programs for photographers and students.A respected judge of competitions and awards as well as portfolio reviewer, she is widely recognized for her blog Marketing Photos, a valued resource for photographers.
Tags: Mary Virginia Swanson, Princeton Architectural Press
Posted in Blog, Book Review, My Published Writing, Photography | 7 Comments »
Tuesday, April 6th, 2010
Words Without Pictures, edited by Alex Klein (Aperture, 2010)
Including an essay by Darius Himes (among numerous others)
ISBN 978-1597111423
6 x 8 inches, Softbound, 510 pages
Words Without Pictures was originally conceived by curator Charlotte Cotton as a means of creating spaces for discourse around current issues in photography. Every month for a year, beginning in November 2007, an artist, educator, critic or curator was invited to contribute a short unillustrated essay about an aspect of emerging photography. Each piece was available on the Words Without Pictures website for one month and was accompanied by a discussion forum focused on its specific topic. Over the course of its month-long “life,” each essay received both invited and unsolicited responses from a wide range of interested parties. All of these essays, responses and other provocations are gathered together here. Previously issued as a print-on-demand title, we are pleased to present Words Without Pictures to the trade for the first time as part of the Aperture Ideas series. The contributors are Amy Adler, George Baker, Christopher Bedford, Walead Beshty, Sarah Charlesworth, Charlotte Cotton, John Divola, Shannon Ebner, Jason Evans, Harrell Fletcher, Paul Graham, Leslie Hewitt, Darius Himes, Soo Kim, Sze Tsung Leong, Miranda Lichtenstein, Sharon Lockhart, Allan McCollum, Kevin Moore, Carter Mull, Marisa Olson, Arthur Ou, Anthony Pearson, Michael Queenland, Allen Ruppersberg, Alex Slade, A.L. Steiner, Penelope Umbrico, James Welling, Charlie White, Mark Wyse and Amir Zaki.
Excerpt from the essay “Who Cares About Books?” by Darius Himes
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Tags: Aperture, Charlotte Cotton
Posted in Book Review, My Published Writing | No Comments »
Monday, April 5th, 2010
Short Track, by Jake Mendel (powerHouse Books, 2009)
Essay by Darius Himes
ISBN 978-1-57687-510-0
9.25 x 12.25 inches, Hardcover, 112 pages, 75 duotone illustrations
Excerpt from the essay “Dangerous Speed” by Darius Himes:
I first learned how to drive stick on the family riding lawnmower, of all things. It was an early-80s John Deere model that my father purchased with a healthy employee discount, and which came equipped with a clutch and 3-speed transmission. It wasn’t clear to me then how important knowledge of a manual transmission would be for my adult life. What was clear at the moment was that in the right patch of loose gravel in the alley separating our garage and the back 1/2 acre, you could actually make that thing peel out and leave a tiny puff of dust. The fact that it would assist in mowing the expansive lawn that my little brother and I were in charge of really only dawned on me later.
At top speed, the lawnmower could hit about 8 mph. This was a major disappointment for a 12 year old, to be sure. For years already I had been studying the various dune buggies and three wheelers available in the back of the oversize Montgomery Ward’s catalog that would arrive twice a year at our home in rural Iowa. I already knew, deep in my heart, that I wanted a motorized vehicle with potential for excessive speed. The lawnmower was definitely not it. But it was a step in the right direction.
My first conscious awakening to the thrill and allure of dangerous speed came years earlier while perched on the middle hump of the back bench seat of my father’s 1966 Ford Mustang. My dad, in truth, is no “car guy” but on open stretches of country road, where visibility is high and your foot is connected to the gas pedal of a hunk of barely-sweating-at-60-mph American steel and ingenuity, what guy (or gal) doesn’t become a “car guy”?
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Posted in Blog, Book Review, My Published Writing | No Comments »
Tuesday, December 15th, 2009
What would happen if the printed book had just been invented in a high-tech world in which people had never done their reading from anything but computer screens? The unquestionable advantages of the computer would not be threatened by this new product but the people, who so love to compare apples with pears, would be quite bowled over by this ultra-modern invention: after years spent chained to the screen they would suddenly have something they could open like a window or a door – a machine you can physically enter! For the first time knowledge would be combined with a sense of touch and gravity – this new invention allows you to experience the most incredible sensations, reading becomes a physical experience. And after experiencing knowledge only as a bundle of connections, as a system of interacting networks, suddenly here is individuality: every book is an independent personality, which cannot be taken apart or added to at will. And how relaxing these new reading appliances are, their operating systems never needs updating – the only thing that changes over the course of time is the message that they contain, which is always open to new interpretations.
—By Juan Villoro, in an article in last month’s adn CULTURA (an Argentinian culture magazine) about the “future of books.”
[kindly pointed about by reader David Christensen, and translated via SignandSight.com].
Tags: adn CULTURA, Juan Villoro
Posted in Book Review, Photography | No Comments »
Sunday, December 13th, 2009
The Premise: A Crowd Sourced Blog Posting About Photography Book Publishing
Andy Adams, the creative juice behind the online magazine Flak Photo recently contacted me about a “crowd-sourced” blog posting relating to photobooks, in conjunction with Resolve, the Livebooks blog. Was I game in posting something on my own blog? Sure. I’m always game for a discussion about photobooks.
Miki Johnson, an editor and contributor to Resolve kick started the discussion with a smattering of provocative questions: “What do you think photobooks will look like in 10 years? Will they be digital or physical? Open-source or proprietary? Will they be read on a Kindle or an iPhone? And what aesthetic innovations will have transformed them?”
Continue reading this article…
Tags: Andy Adams, Blurb, Eileen Gittins, Errata Editions, Flak Photo, Hassla Books, Hidden Words, iPhone, Kindle, Livebooks, Marc Feustel, Photography Book Now, Radius Books, Rathole Books, Steven Pinker
Posted in Book Review, Photography | 13 Comments »
Thursday, September 10th, 2009
The winners of the Photography.Book.Now contest have just been announced (Reuters announcement here & PDN article here)!
Out of the winning titles selected by the great team of judges, of which I served as Lead Judge, Rafal Milach‘s “Black Sea of Concrete” stood out as the best overall photobook. It stands as a wonderful embodiment of all of the criteria I asked the judges to consider: strong photography, important subject matter, vigorous edit and intelligent sequencing, combined with a thoughtful attention to those elements that are specifically book-centric, including type treatment, page-layout and cover design.
At the heart of the contest was the combination of photographs and books. The contest was not just about photographs, but about photographs in book form.
Overall, Milach’s book is one that I think people will want to return to repeatedly. He enlisted the assistance of a designer and an editor, and in doing so exhibited care and attention to the book, as a whole, acknowledging his own strengths and weaknesses in the process; it was truly teamwork that led to a better end-result. As lead judge, I’m extremely proud to have been able to award the Grand Prize to a relatively young photographer and book artist and I look forward to seeing more from him in the future.
The other winners include:
Kurt Tong, who won in the Editorial Category with People’s Park (below, top)
Joshua Deaner, who won in the Fine Art category with I Sell Fish (below, bottom)
And Dennis Kleiman, who won in the Commercial category with Volume One
Read the story on PDN here (with more photos). Read the Blurb blog here. To join judges and winners at various meet-ups around the country (+London), click here.
About Photography.Book.Now
Photography.Book.Now is an international juried self-published book competition, and a celebration of the most creative, most innovative, and finest photography books – and the people behind them. Now in its second year, Photography.Book.Now offers photographers of all stripes the opportunity to showcase their work to a world-renowned panel of judges, and take a shot at a $25,000 grand prize. Submissions closed on July 16, 2009. For more information on prizes, sponsors, and upcoming social events, visit www.photographybooknow.com.
Tags: Blurb.com, Dennis Kleiman, Joshua Deaner, Kurt Tong, PDN, Photography Book Now, Rafal Milach
Posted in Book Review, Events & News, Photography | No Comments »
Tuesday, February 24th, 2009
[Photograph from The New York Times Magazine of Wall in his studio.]
We are currently reading through Charlotte Cotton’s The Photograph As Contemporary Art as the primary textbook for my History of Photography III at The College of Santa Fe. Chapter 2 (to be read for our Friday, March 6 class) is called Once Upon A Time and “considers the use of storytelling in contemporary art photography.” Charlotte goes on to say that “Some of the photographs shown here make obvious references to fables, fairy tales, apocryphal events and modern myths that are already part of our collective consciousness.” Some of the photographers that immediately come to mind are Yale professor Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Sam Taylor-Wood, Justine Kurland, Anna Gaskell, Gregory Crewdson (another Yale faculty member), and of course Jeff Wall. We are going to focus on Wall’s work in class.
There is one outside reading on Wall and his work that is required for class. It is the The New York Times Magazine review, by Arthur Lubow, of Wall’s 2007 exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art in New York (and which then traveled to the Art Institute of Chicago and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art).
Tags: Charlotte Cotton, Jeff Wall, New York Times Magazine, The Museum of Modern Art
Posted in Book Review, Photography | No Comments »
Tuesday, February 24th, 2009
Traditional chemical photography is an extraordinarily flexible field, which, even as it disappears, has hardly been touched.—Richard Benson
The Spring 2009 issue of Aperture (194) arrived today with my review of Richard Benson’s recently published book, The Printed Picture. The book, which stands on its own, also accompanies an exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art, in New York City, and which, thankfully, is still open for viewing (through July 13, 2009). For ANYONE interested in the history of image-making, reproduction techniques, and the history of photography and photographic practices, this show (and book) is an absolute MUST.
Here’s an excerpt from my review of the book:
Benson, a photographer and master printer, has a methodical mind and approaches his subject systematically; The Printed Picture is thus, at its most basic level, a textbook—though the writing is never pedantic or stuffy. Benson developed the material presented here over the course of thirty years of teaching at Yale University, and reading his words is not unlike the experience of being in a lecture hall. Each chapter presents a class of printing processes (such as “relief printing” or “non-silver processes”), and each derivative process within that chapter is limited to a double-page spread complete with illustration and detail enlargement. Entire processes are distilled to three or four paragraphs at most—digestible, succinct, and engaging.
In the first 100 pages of this 338-page book Benson takes great pains to cover all the known processes, and offers a sturdy and admirably comprehensible outline of the fundamental approaches to reproduction prior to photography. In the book’s first four chapters he discusses relief, intaglio, and planographic printing—the triumvirate of ink-on-paper printing techniques—along with early multiple-impression color processes and such elementary printing methods as stencils, rubbings, silhouettes, and the typewriter. All these early techniques, some of which have been around for centuries (in certain cases millennia), seem to have played an important role on the inexorable passage toward the invention of photography. …
The Printed Picture will speak most clearly to those readers who have spent years in the halls of art schools and love the smell of ink and turpentine, who wax poetic at the sight of fixer-stained trays, or geek out over a mammoth-plate albumen print. By the end of the book, it is clear that materiality and man’s incessant curiosity are the central themes of The Printed Picture. The love of objects and of evidence of the artist’s hand—as un-digital as that may sound—are still both relevant and worthy of celebrating. —Darius Himes.
Enjoy!
Tags: Aperture, Museum of Modern Art, Richard Benson
Posted in Book Review, Photography | No Comments »
« Older Entries
Photography: A Very Short Introduction
Words Without Pictures (Aperture, 2010)
Short Track, by Jake Mendel
Bird Watching, by Paula McCartney