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Art Photography
In the last decade, interest in photography has exploded. Among the most compelling and popular art forms, photography is now recognized as central to the development of modern and contemporary art. In this accessibly written survey, art photography comes alive through a series of frames—from documentary style and pictorialism to archives, narratives, and the conceptual uses of the medium. David Bate traces major developments and themes from the earliest days of photography, in the 1830s, to the present day, examining the many ways in which photography and art have intersected since the birth of the medium. Featuring works from a wide and international group of artists—including Henry Fox Talbot, Roger Fenton, Lee Miller, Brassaï, Robert Frank, Nan Goldin, Ed Ruscha, and Gillian Wearing — this comprehensive volume uncovers the Anglo-American and European contexts of art photography, as well as the Asian, African, and Middle Eastern perspectives.
- GenresPhotographyArt
160 pages, Paperback
First published March 15, 2016
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April 3, 2017
A "written" survey of different themes of art photography, to illustrate how written it is , here is a picture
...this is probably not what anyone would expect from a photography book. To be fair, there are some full-page panels but,in a written survey, they are like the exceptions proving the rule... That being said,these walls of texts do provide more context, visual analysis and interpretation to those themes. While each chapter focus on about a dozen artists of that theme in detail, the chapter itself does not read like a listicle but an evolving idea, a feat seldom achieved in this type of survey. The last two chapters "Archives, Networks and Narratives" and "Geography as Inhabited Space" are generally less covered in other introductory text and feel ...fresh in a peculiar way.
However, the book may be too heavy on the historical side of things and I am not sure how the first chapter(on the history of photographic techniques) is fitting here.It's rather strange to see large blocks of text dissecting a thumbnail, especially when the tone is this dry artspeak. Every six pages or so, I am reminded that the book can benefit from tighter editing. Transitions between chapters is quite forced to the point of being ...inadvertently hilarious.
On top of these, I don't find many of these artists worth noting and I have never got so short a list of names after reading a survey (mostly) full of artists not known to me...
...this is probably not what anyone would expect from a photography book. To be fair, there are some full-page panels but,in a written survey, they are like the exceptions proving the rule... That being said,these walls of texts do provide more context, visual analysis and interpretation to those themes. While each chapter focus on about a dozen artists of that theme in detail, the chapter itself does not read like a listicle but an evolving idea, a feat seldom achieved in this type of survey. The last two chapters "Archives, Networks and Narratives" and "Geography as Inhabited Space" are generally less covered in other introductory text and feel ...fresh in a peculiar way.
However, the book may be too heavy on the historical side of things and I am not sure how the first chapter(on the history of photographic techniques) is fitting here.It's rather strange to see large blocks of text dissecting a thumbnail, especially when the tone is this dry artspeak. Every six pages or so, I am reminded that the book can benefit from tighter editing. Transitions between chapters is quite forced to the point of being ...inadvertently hilarious.
On top of these, I don't find many of these artists worth noting and I have never got so short a list of names after reading a survey (mostly) full of artists not known to me...
Displaying 1 of 1 review