Review: Photography; A Critical Introduction. 4th Edn. Ed. Liz Wells

Photography: A Critical Introduction (2009) 4^th Edition, edited by Liz Wells and published by Routledge is a  core text on the Open College of the Arts Art of Photography module.  The focus in the text is an exploration of key debates in photographic theory and their placement in their social and political contexts.   The individual chapters cover key issues in photographic history, documentary photography and photojournalism, personal photography, photography and the body, commodity culture and photography, photography as art and the digital age.  Each of the chapters is written by different authors including Derrek Price, Liz Wells, Patricia Holland, Michelle Henning, Anandi Ramamurthy and Martin Lister.

The use of multiple authors with different styles and approaches could have led to a disjointed text.  However, the use of a common format for each chapter including sidebar referencing f texts mentioned with summaries of the text in the side bar, a comprehensive glossary, chapter summaries and case studies means that there is a coherence to the text.

As a new student to photography the significance of many topics will only emerge over time.  However, there were some immediate learning points, particularly in the chapters on photography as art and the commodity culture. Specifically, the transition in photography from picture taking to picture making as discussed in the chapter on photography as art and the use of images in commodity culture in the chapter dealing with advertising photography.

Review: ‘Robert Doisneau’ – Jean Claude Gautrand

Robert Doisneau (1912-1944) spent most of his life taking street photographs in and around Paris.  In the book being reviewed here (Robert Doisneau, by Jean laude Gautrand, Taschen, 2012) he is quoted in the notes as saying that ‘Paris is a theatre where you book your place by wasting time.  And I am still waiting’.   Many of his most famous images e.g. ‘the kiss’ and ‘the sidelong glance’ were clearly set up and intended to be humorous; many dealt with Paris during its occupation by the Nazis and have a much more serious intent; Arrest of a Sniper, Clandestine Press.  These and about 150 other images spanning the period 1912 to 1985 have been brought together in this small format publication by Taschen and published.  The book notes have been prepared by Jean Claude Gautrand.  The images are grouped into ‘The Early Years – 1912-1939’, ‘The War – 1939-1944’, ‘A Thirst for Images – 1945-1960’, ‘From Toil to Consecration – 1960-1944’.  the book notes are grouped into three sections ‘Lessons of the Street’, ‘Paris:The Luck of the Stroll’, ‘Robert Doisneau’s Legacy’.

The Taschen volume is a small, nicely produced publication that provides a useful introduction into the influences on Doisneau and the images he made.

Review: ‘Walker Evans’; Thames and Hudson – Photofile

Thames and Hudson’s Photofile series aims to bring the world’s best photographersto the general public in a small attractive format.  Each little volume contaains about sixt images in a pocket book sized format.   I was not familiar with Walker Evans, until I bought the book and started to recognise some of his iconic images.  Evans spent a short time (1935-1938) working with Farm Security Administration (FSA) during which he produced very powerful images symbolising the Great Depression.  In particular, his images of tenant farmers individually and collectively are very stong. Here his image of an Alabama tenant farmer from 1935; here his image of Allie Mae Boroughs and here his image of a cotton picking tenant family all symbolise the poverty of the Great Depression.  However, while many of his best known images were not associated with the FSA they all carry strong symbolic elements. e.g. his images of women as objects of repulsion and as fetishes.

A short introduction covers his background, work and the key influences on his image making. The book’s small format does not do justice to many of the images but as an inexpensive introduction to his work the book succeeds.

Review: ‘Context and Narrative’ – Maria Short

 

Although not a core or recommended text for the Open College of the Arts Art of Photography programme Maria Short’s Context and Narrative  is a significant complementary text to the final section on Narrative and Illustration and provides a much needed theoretical underpinning that is absent from the course notes and any of the other texts suggested.  The book is in the AVA published ‘Basics’ series in Creative Photography and was published in 2011.  The book is 175 pages long, very well laid out ( see below) and written in a style that combines images, case studies, summaries,’points to consider’, reflections and exercises in  a very easily followed manner.

The book is divided into six sections that deal in turn with ‘The Photograph’, ‘Subject’, ‘Audience’, ‘Narative’, ‘Signs and Symbols’ and ‘Text’.  A recommended reading section at the end is followed by a list of online resources and, in line with AVA’s policy of bringing ethical issues to the fore, an end piece titled ‘working with ethics’.  Each section consists of discussion of the subject, a case study, exercises which deal with the subject matter and a summary. In addition, each section is liberally sprinkled with quotations from visual artists and authors that flesh out some element of the subject matter.

There is so much in this book that I found helpful and insightful that I know I will be returning to it regularly.  Of particular interest was a section dealing with the choice of subject.  Short offers practical advice to help identofy the subjects that mght be chosen by focusing on processes one enjoys, ‘things’ that people associate with you and then from these lists transalating them into subjects that you might work with – all very practical.

Review: ‘Light – Science and Magic’; Hunter, Biver and Fuqua

Light – Science and Magic (An Introduction to Photographic Lighting) by Fil Hunter, Steven Biver and Paul Fuqua is a core text on the Open College of the Arts, Art of Photography course.  The edition reviewed here is the Fourth and the book was published by Focal Press in 2012.

The book has 10 chapters; How to Learn Lighting, Light: The Raw Material of Photography, The Management of Reflection and the Family of Angles, Surface Appearances, Revealing Shape and Contour, Metal, The Case of the Disappearing Glass, An Arsenal of Lights, The Extremes and Travelling Light.

With the exception of Chapter 2 (Light; The Raw Material of Photography) there is very little of a technical nature in the book so the material is easy to follow and replicate if needed.  In terms of the OCA course Art of Photography, and in particular the section on light, the chapters on the family of angles, surface appearances, revealing shape and contour and metal from the book are of most use since it is these that are the focus of attention of the exercises and assignment in the section on light in the course.

The book has many positives.  As noted above it does not overly labour the physics and maths of light, it uses clear diagrams and images to illustrate the points and is written in a clear and easily followed style.  On the negative side it provides no guidance on the lighting options that the beginner might usefully consider buying or making and neither does it cover essential differences or similarities between flash systems and other forms of lighting that might be used by the beginner.

Review: ‘Composition’; David Prakel

David Prakel’s book  Composition is on the recommended reading list for the Open College of the Art’s Art of Photography module.  The book is published by AVA and the 2nd edition from 2012 is considered here.  This book is in the series ‘Basics – Photography’ and is a companion volume to Behind the Image which has been reviewed in this blog.

The book was recommended by my Tutor for the programme and having read and considered the book I can see it as being a useful alternative to the core text for the programme The Photographer’s Eye  by Michael Freeman.   The book is organised into six broad sections; Basics, Formal Elements, Organising Space, Organising Time, Originality and Application.   Within each section there are short, no more than two to three page parts, that break the overall topics down still further so that each is in a manageable format.  It also helps that each section is heavily illustrated.  I was completing the second assignment on design while reading the book and found it more useful than Freeman in that the essence of each design element was clearer to me. The inclusion of exercises and case studies adds to the usefulness of the book.

Review: ‘Why People Photograph’; Robert Adams

‘…art is too important to confuse with interior decoration or an investment opportunity.  Its real use… is to affirm meaning and thus “to keep intact an affection for life”‘.  Robert Adams, quoted in Why People Photograph by Robert Adams, Aperture, 1994.  If this, from the frontispiece of this book, were the only thing  read in the book then it would have been worthwhile.

In many respects the book, subtitled Selected Essays and Reviews, is a smorgasbord of bits and pieces; essays, reflections, critique.  This makes for a disjointed reading experience as Adams, a photographer and writer, explores in essay format themes under the heading ‘What can Help’, such as colleagues, humor, money and dogs, ‘Examples of Success’ such as Edward Weston, Paul Strand, Dorothea Lange and Ansel Adams and ‘Working Conditions’ in the United States.  This doesn’t really matter as peppered throughout the book are simple but deeply insightful perspectives on art, life and photography.

On Colleagues – ‘If I like many photographers, and I do, I account for this by noting a quality they share – animation.  They may or may not make a living by photography, but they are alive by it.’

On Writing – ‘The main reason that artists don’t willingly describe or explain what they produce is, however, that the minute they do so they’ve admitted failure.  Words are proof that the vision they had is not, in the opinion of some at least, fully there in the picture.  Characterising in words what they thought they’d shown is an acknowledgement that the photograph is unclear – that is not art.’

On Teaching – ‘… academics enjoy disassembling things in order to understand how they work, artists enjoy taking scattered pieces and assembling things from them that do work.’

On Paul Strand’s ‘Mr Bennett’  – ‘…we continue to speculate, as we do with all great art, because the picture is clearer than life and in this consoling.’  A particularly powerful insight follows this observation on ‘Mr Bennett’.  ‘Photographs as exceptional as Strand’s originate, I think, in personal need, in an urgency to find what the artist has to have to be at peace (the mediocrity of much assigned work results from this lack of compulsion).  The necessity builds, sometimes from wholly private, individual factors, but often the way these relate to the social context, until the artist is forced to take the risk of making something untried’. (Emphasis mine).

Post Script

I wondered as I made my way through this book why photographers always have a first name; Edward, Ansel, Diane but painters rarely; Van Gogh, Constable, Bacon.

Review: ‘The Photograph’ – Graham Clarke

The Photograph is a core text for the Open College of the Arts Art of Photography module.  The book, written by Graham Clarke and published in the Oxford History of Art series in 1997, is, like another core text The Photograph as Contemporary Art , organised on the basis of themes.  In the case of this book the themes are more accessible and amenable to novices to study in the Art of Photography.

The book consists of 11 chapters organised as follows; What is  a Photograph, How do we Read a Photograph, Photography and the Nineteenth Century, Landscape in Photography, The City in Photography, The Portrait in Photography, The Body in Photography, Documentary Photography, The Photograph as Fine Art, The Photograph Manipulated and the Cabinet of Infinet Curiosities.

Each chapter is packed with insights.  From the beginning the book asks us questions and provides perspectives about photography as an artistic medium; ‘…those photographs deemed to have the most value are the least functional, and vice versa.’; ‘..the photographer, like the poet, ‘sees into the life of things’.’ Simple analyses of Matthew Brady’s portraiture of the American Civil War combine with distinctions between Roger Fenton’s images of an English rural idyll and Timothy’ O’Sullivan’s images of American frontier life and experience.

Perhaps the chapter that impacted most, although it is a genre that I struggle with in my own practise, is the city images.  Weegee, Lewis Hine, Stieglitz, Walker Evans are all treated to Clarke’s analysis and the end result is a much deeper understanding on the part of the reader of how and why this genre has become so important.

Whereas The Photograph as Contemporary Art  will need to be revisited because it has come  too early in my studies, this book will need to be revisited because there is so much to glean from it that it cannot be accommodated in one sitting.

Review: ‘The Photograph as Contemporary Art’ – Charlotte Cotton

The Photograph as Contemporary Art by Charlotte Cotton (Thames and Hudson, 2009, 248pp) is a core text for the Art of Photography course in the open College of the Arts.  While Level 4 of the OCA Photography degree is primary aimed at developing a high level of skills in the art of photography both this text and The Photograph , reviewed elsewhere, challenge those new to the study of photography, like this author, to think about the art beyond the technical level.

The Photograph as Contemporary Art is divided into eight chapters; If This is Art, Once Upon a Time, Deadpan, Something and Nothing, Intimate Life, Moments in History, Revived and Remade and Physical and Material.  Cotton notes in the introduction to the book that it is not meant to be a checklist of all the photographers who merit a mention in a discussion on contemporary art but ‘…to give a sense of the spectrum of motivations and expressions that currently exist in the field.’  The chapters group photographers who share a common ground in terms of ‘…their motivations and working practices’.

As someone new to the study of photography the opening chapter ‘If This is Art’ was most accessible dealing as it does with how photographers devise strategies, performances and happenings especially for the camera.  Of particular interest to me was the analysis of the way in which photography moved from a medium in which the photographer was responding to events to a medium in which the photographer could pre conceive events and so change the way we think about the physical and social world.

The third chapter ‘Deadpan’ resonated with me insofar as it dwelt on the types of images that feature regularly in my image making.  A major issue for me, however, is that whereas I make these types of images to satisfy a need to portray formality, the authors whose work and approaches is considered by Cotton use deadpan approaches as a way of forcing the viewer to think beyond the motives of the photographer to consider more widely the forces that govern the man-made and natural world.

If I am being honest, I think this book has come a little too early me as a new entrant to the study of the photographic medium.  While some insights have been gleaned, as noted above, this is a text that will repay further consideration a little later on my photographic journey.

Book Review – ‘The Photographer’s Eye’

John Szarkowski was a photographer but it was as Director of the Department of Photography at the Museum of Modern Art in New York that he became best known in the world of fine art photography.  He is widely credited with bringing fine art photography into main stream fine art appreciation with regular exhibitions of photography at the museum.   The Photographer’s Eye  was published in 1966 and reprinted in 1980.  The edition reviewed here was published by the Museum of Modern Art in 2007 in a slightly different format than the earlier 1966 and 1980 editions. The text is a recommended text for the Art of Photography course in the Open College of the Arts.

The format and layout of the book is very similar to Stephen Shore’s The Nature of Photographs reviewed at http://wp.me/p3PbRS-1l. A brief introduction is followed by five sections on ‘The Thing Itself’, ‘The Detail’, ‘The Frame’, ‘Time’ and ‘Vantage Point’.

Szarkowski argues in ‘The Thing Itself’ that the first thing a photographer learns is that photography deals with the actual and that this fact must be treasured.  Because a photographer deals with the actual it was the photographer’s problem to force the facts to tell the truth (‘The Detail’).

In telling the truth and dealing with the actual the photographer did not conceive so much as select a subject since it was never wholly contained within the viewfinder.  This is why ‘The Frame’ becomes so important; the edges of the photographer’s film demarcated what was thought to be most important.  Further, if in framing the subject or subjects, they became isolated from the world around them then relationships became created that might not have existed previously.  As each of the five sections contains a short introduction dealing with the theoretical perspective followed by photographs it is possible to consider theory and practice together.  I was particularly taken with Szarkowski’s consideration of the frame and what is inside and outside given  that at the same time I was considering this text I was undertaking exercises on the frame in the Art of Photography course; see http://wp.me/p3PbRS-K for one of the exercises. In particular, I found myself reconsidering Paul Strand’s images.  Whilst the clean lines of Strand’s architectural images have always appealed the precision of his framing had escaped me until it was drawn to my attention by Szarkowski.  Consider Strand’s ‘Church on the Hill, Vermont’ from1946

in which the church is precisely framed between two trees ensuring that the viewer is almost subconsciously forced to consider only the church, bounded as it is within the frame by the trees and the sky without either of these framing devices drawing attention to themselves.

The final two sections on ‘Time’ and ‘Vantage Point’ Szarkowski draws attention to the unique attribute of photography to capture moments in time on the one hand and the ability to ‘obscure’ the narrative  while giving us a sense of the scene by changing the vantage point on the other.  Ken Josephson’s ‘Season’s Geetings’ being a good example of a perfectly understandable scene – baby and shadow – but whose narrative is perfectly unclear http://www.moma.org/collection_images/resized/183/w165h80crop/CRI_182183.jpg

This introduction to the reading of photographs is invaluable for the photography student as clearly and simply some basic tenets of the image are explained thus allowing the student develop a new set of tools with which to read images.