Book review : The Genius of Photography: Gerry Badger

Gerry Badger’s The Genius of Photography is a book that I have been dipping in and out of throughout the time I have been working on TAOP and was one that I first came across when watching the television series of the same name a few years ago.  Essentially, it is a book that covers the various photographic movements through the twentieth century and explores developments via the key events, people and photographs that defined the era.  The evolution of photography from the earliest images by Niepce to the end of the century and slightly beyond (2006) is covered in a succinct way and the social context of the imagery thoroughly explored and exemplified with around twenty key images in each section. 

The historical coverage was the major element in the book for me and the treatment of the development of social documentary photography and the start of photography as a political and propagandist tool especially so.  The third chapter, Some decisive moments (maybe?), gives an interesting appraisal of (mostly) war images from Robert Capa (Loyalist militiaman ..etc), Lee Miller and her post-war documentation of the Holocaust and its victims, Don McCullin in Vietnam and Luc Delahaye in Iraq and discusses points around how photographs can be tailored to a cause via the way they are taken and edited, and indeed how events in war can also be manipulated to suit photography.  Face to Face looks at portraits and how they developed in an historical context and how they can generate and channel emotional responses, and Badger very succinctly states that a portrait “ … is capable of immortalising and creating myth.  It can confer acknowledgement and bestow dignity.  It can also stereotype, debase and dehumanise.”  The chapter starts with Nadar’s photograph of Sarah Bernhardt from 1863 as a fairly uncomplicated image and travels a path through Paul Strand and Walker Evans and others, concentrating on the ‘reading’ of the images and what could potentially be derived from them other than just the face in the portrait.  Nudity gets quite short treatment and seems to focus mostly on where the images taken have been sympathetic and often taken in an apparently willing collaboration, although he does briefly cover the uncomfortable looking subjects of Diane Arbus and self-portraits of Jo Spence as she explores the demonisation of the aging female form.

There are two sections at the end of the book which I found especially useful and interesting.  Firstly, there is an historical timeline of the development of photography to the modern day paralleled with major world events which occurred at the same time set alongside, and secondly a glossary of the terms used over the years to describe different print processes.  So, if you want to know the differences between your gum bichromate print and your palladiotype, then this is the place to look.

The book is quite a large format (23 x 20cm) and the images are clear and well set out, although I did find the sudden appearance of large bold font in the titles of some of the images quite strange.  It is a book that has been well reviewed elsewhere and one particular quote from Martin Parr caught my eye “An excellent primer and leads us through the complexities of understanding what makes a great image .. Badger’s book lays out the debates in a clear, authoritative way.”  I’d certainly agree with that, and I found the book immensely readable and engaging throughout and will be a resource that will doubtless find use again as I progress.

Book review : Behind the Image : Fox and Caruana

Behind the Image, by Anna Fox and Natasha Caruana, was not on the reading list for TAOP when I first started, but since then it has appeared as an essential reader for this introductory module and indeed for several other modules on the Photography degree path.  It is essentially a guide to the tools and theories which underpin photographic research and focusses on the processes that drive successful photographic projects. As such, it is clearly an ideal companion to many of the projects we undertake as part of OCA study. 

The book is immensely readable and draws examples from a range of photographers covering different areas of practice.  The initial chapter sets the scene with an overview of the essential processes from planning a project, moving through the research phase and finally to delivery.  The authors focus on several key areas which I think are likely to get overlooked in the rush to take pictures, and these are the actual title of the planned work and its intended audience, obviously key factors but easy to pass by, and they also emphasise the benefit of a solid research proposal in driving the structure of the final work.  The first chapter concludes with a review of the work done by Natasha Caruana in documenting the Aberfan mining tragedy and emphasises the importance of building up a relationship with the people involved in both the history and present of a project and pacing the development of this relationship to eventually gain deeper access to their lives and really start to understand and photograph the impact of the event.  Record keeping and the potential value of mind maps in developing ideas and project strategies are also covered, along with some suggestions of how to utilise these.

Sourcing research materials and collating their contents is covered at some length, although I found this personally less useful as it is close to what I do in real life, as is the keeping of accurate research records and records of personal ideas.  Another suggestion was to actually take photographs of yourself working and record the process of the development of the project rather than just shooting images as potential final copy.  I tried to adopt this idea when I was doing the Light and Illustration and Narrative assignments and found it a really valuable way of retaining ideas and recording personal progression.

There is an interesting section on street photography which emphasises the need for research here too.  Things can happen fast and Fox proposes location visits to look for good angles, backgrounds, light direction and situations that might arise, or indeed can be made to arise.  I have yet to make any sort of serious effort at street photography and it is good advice.

There is extensive coverage of post-production and editing for different photographic genres from street to fashion and again the emphasis is on exemplary record keeping, both of practical aspects of the project and of ideas and thoughts as the project progresses.  One of the most interesting aspects is around the taking of numerous ‘test’ photographs as an active part of the research process, as a route to identifying the final images and as a mechanism to attain continuous improvement.  This is less applicable to street photography than to work in a studio, but I am personally aware that that I just don’t take enough images as I progress through a project and try too hard to conjure up what I visualise as the final image too soon in the process. 

The chapter on ‘Compiling your research’  is highly applicable to the OCA course as it covers workbooks, sketchbooks, blogging and storage of archive material.  It even suggests starting your own blog, so at least I’ve got one thing right …

Overall, the book has an emphasis on the understanding, evolution and recording of research process as a continuum which allows later reflection and expansion in the light of developing experience.  It draws from some excellent examples in terms of the specific real projects described (Aberfan was for me the most poignant and meaningful of these, but then I’m old enough to remember it) and how they were researched and executed.  The text is lively and easy to read and the layout and reproduction neat and clean.  Well worth a read to emphasise some key pointers in getting project photography right from the outset, though the £23 price tag is steep for what is on offer I thought.

Book review: Reframing Art

Carter, M., Geczy, A.  Reframing Art (2006). Australia.  UNSW Press

‘Reframing Art’ by Michael Carter and Adam Geczy was suggested by my tutor as a worthwhile introduction to the concepts relating to art history and theory.  Although it is certainly not a photography book in any way, many of the concepts pertinent to painting, sculpture etc. also relate to photography as an art form.  The book starts by asking what art is (possibly one the of the world’s most long running debates) and moves through art works as symbolic objects (touching on some of the semiotics we discussed in the residential weekend in Leeds) and finally explores how we look at art, how it is exploited as a commodity, how it is displayed and the sort of audience that views art.  All the chapters are developed from relatively simple beginnings and the more complex areas such as the temporal progression of art objects from a starting point of often low value raw materials through to their emergence as potentially major investments, are explained thoughtfully and logically.

The text is more accessible than some of the art books I have explored recently and is certainly a significant move away from the challenges of Graham Clarke, a writer with whom I have somewhat limited resonance, although I concede that I am beginning to get a grip on his book as the course has progressed.  In the second chapter of Reframing Art the authors explore public perception of artists and make the point that over the last 150 years there has been very little change in how artists are generally portrayed, and in fact often caricatured, in the media.  They describe the stereotypical artist as “ .. nearly always being depicted as a peculiar kind of person: a bit mad.  He (and it always is a he) is someone who make subjects or creates experiences that are generally incomprehensible to patrons of the work and the general public.  The fact that they look different to the rest of the population is most telling.”  I wonder to what extent ‘artists’ have deliberately perpetuated this persona though, as indeed do many groups in society.  I’m sure I fit the ‘mad scientist’ bracket quite well …

Another feature of this chapter was the description of the collaborative nature of many great paintings.  Having never studied art in any way before, I had not appreciated the extent to which ‘the master’ left significant amounts of the painting of pictures to students and how many great works are a collective of different contributions, with the named artist often just applying their style in finishing off key elements of the pictures themselves.  One example of a major piece of collaborative art given in the book is Rembrandt’s ‘The Gold Weigher’ where the hand of the master is only apparent in certain key areas of the image, with much work having arguably been done by pupils.  This is perhaps analogous to photographers who specialise in elaborate tableaux settings involving large crews of assistants, lighting engineers and actors.  Gregory Crewdson springs to mind, and although he is directing and taking the photograph, many others are contributing to the generation of the final image.  Just a thought.

Rembrandt:  The Gold Weigher

 

The concept of framing was another topic in the book that struck me as being especially pertinent to photography.  The authors point out that most conventional paintings have borders and that these borders are further restricted by the use of a frame of some sort.  It is only a small leap to take this into photography, which of course restricts its imagery to the dimensions of the film or sensor, assuming we are not including stitched panoramics of course.  They draw a parallel with primitive cave art where the narrative in the paintings tend to just keep running along the walls until the artists ran out of cave!  Interestingly, as we have marched through historical time and increased in technical development and sophistication we seem to have progressively inhibited ourselves as far as boxing in pictures and photographs.

The New York Times described this book as “hands down, the most readable, up to date, introduction to art theory available”.  Although my spectrum of comparison is very small, I did find the book approachable and readable, whether taking the chapters in sequence or just dipping into specific areas.  I am sure that as my studies progress I will be able to gain more from ‘Reframing Art’ and it certainly serves as a valuable baseline from which to develop over time.

Understanding photographs - and books reviewed

Full bibliographic details in the blog sidebar

Since starting the course back in February I have accumulated a number of books that have been either specified course reading materials, tutor recommendations of suggestions from other students that have cropped up in the OCA student forum or on the flickr discussion site.  I have wanted to produce a short review of some of these for a while, but decided to wait until getting quite well through the course before assembling my notes into something more substantial as I generally read the books through and then dipped into them periodically as the course progressed.  There is no doubt that my opinions of some of the content and its meaning has changed over the last few months as has my view of the comparative utility of some of the material, so it seemed appropriate to wait until this juncture.  Much of the guidance for TAOP is derived from Freeman’s The Photographer’s Eye, but I’ll be saving final thoughts on that until I have finished Assignment 5 and submitted for assessment in March.

When I started the course I was very new to the study of photographic images as art and took a very narrow perspective on much of my early reading outside of the entirely technical material.   Although I would claim no expertise in this whatsoever after ten months study, going back into the books in the light of experiences gained, particularly on study days, has to an extent changed my view of some of the views expressed by ‘art writers’.

Grahame Clarke’s “The Photograph” initially provides a fairly standard introduction to the historical development of photography from the time of Niepce, through wet-plate photography to the present day, but then launches into  “rather than endorse Baudelaire’s disparaging remarks about its limited capacity for reflecting the superficial aspect of things, this Wordsworthian (even Ruskinian) perspective mythicizes the notion of insight over sight.” I think this makes assumptions about the reader and narrows the field of appeal somewhat, although I’m sure that many of my biochemical writings over the years would have been equally impenetrable to Mr Clarke ...  However, as the book progresses through developing knowledge of how to read a photograph to the sections on landscape, the city, the portrait, the body and documentary photography, the language becomes less obtuse, or maybe I got used to it, and the narrative appears to develop at a faster pace.  I have returned to the chapter on documentary photography a number of times in response to thoughts I have had following various gallery visits, especially Magnum62 and the Prix Pictet 2012 exhibitions. Clarke writes at some length about the importance of Magnum in defining the development of documentary photography and how it drove the development of the genre.

The final chapter, “The cabinet of infinite possibilities” contains an excellent review of the works of Cartier-Bresson and how he opens the world to the camera lens rather than the converse, which Clarke argues is also applicable to most other established ‘art’ photographers.  The book concludes with an enlightening timeline showing the key developments in photography plotted alongside the political and cultural events of the same time in history.

The most significant change for me between my reading of Clarke’s book at the start of the course and my perceptions of it during later visits, is certainly around the subject of how to read a photograph.  Although I think too much interpretation is placed by authors on the content and meaning of some photographs, I have certainly started to learn how to look at an image and see aspects that the photographer intended … or did they ….?

Charlotte Cotton’s “The photograph as contemporary art” was another book I read as part of my introduction to TAOP and commences with “ … the art world embraces the photograph as never before and photographers consider the art gallery or book as the natural home for their work .. “  The first chapter “If this is art” focusses on the act of orchestrating images directly for the camera and makes the point that the creation of  these pieces of art start a long time before the camera is involved in generating the final photographs.  Although I assume that many images have been selected for their somewhat extreme exemplification of the genre, I do find it hard to relate to the works of Edwin Wurm and Tatsumi Orimoto especially.  Orimoto’s photographs of people with bread tied round them are just bizarre.

The second chapter deals with storytelling and presents a good review of the photographers who specialise in the creation of tableaux for their art.  Jeff Walls’ Insomnia features here and this was recently the subject of debate on Weareoca following a post on the subject from Sharon Boothroyd.  Another chapter that resonated with me was Moments in History in which Cotton considers how photography contributes to the reporting and understanding of world events.  She points out that contemporary art photographers have generally taken an ‘anti-reportage stance’, consequently taking a more contemplative approach with medium and large format equipment.  Sophie Ristelhueber’s portrayals of Middle East conflicts and their aftermath produce some poignant images.

Overall, I thought Cotton’s book provided an excellent introduction to photography as a contemporary art form.  It was fast paced and easy to read and brought out the key points, and indeed the key images, to exemplify her points.

Another book I used for introductory reading was Mary Warner Marien’s “Photography: a cultural history”.  This is a mighty tome of a book and at 552 pages and larger than A4 in size, puts many phone directories to shame!  This was by far the best of the introductory texts and I found it immensely entertaining, and with its large format, had the benefit of big pictures which were printed at high quality compared to Cotton and Clarke.  She covers photography in art, science, sociology, travel, war and fashion as well as its development as a tool of the mass media.  The focus throughout is more on the key concepts than on specific individual photographers and it also contains what I thought was the best review of the history of the development of photography that I found, all accompanied by excellent illustrations.  There is even room for a short section on scientific photography which covers Eadweard Muybridge’s work on the science of animal locomotion and spares a few words for Rontgen and the discovery of the potential of x-rays.  It is the easiest of the three books to dip back into and I thought had by far the most attractive and appealing layout – not just due to the larger size, but due to the way in which the image panels were interspersed to break up the text, and the ‘Focus’ sections which cropped up now and again in most chapters to add detail in specific areas, but which were not essential to the casual reader.  All in all the best of the three and I would recommend it highly as long as you don’t need to travel with it!