{"id":40,"date":"2007-10-28T19:17:02","date_gmt":"2007-10-28T19:17:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.foto8.com\/live\/?p=40"},"modified":"2007-10-28T19:17:02","modified_gmt":"2007-10-28T19:17:02","slug":"inside-the-photograph","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.foto8.com\/live\/inside-the-photograph\/","title":{"rendered":"Inside the Photograph"},"content":{"rendered":"

Collections of essays tend, by their nature, to be mixed bags. This anthology of 34 articles, catalogue entries and criticisms spanning the career of one of the most accomplished photographic historians of the 20th century proves no exception. <\/p>\n

From the outset, it\u2019s clear Inside the Photograph<\/em> is going to be an unashamedly highbrow book \u2013 and, rightly, no apology is made for this. In his foreword, Malcolm Daniel, head curator of the photography department at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, describes the contents as \u201cplainspoken, insightful discourses about the soul of the medium, not its surface\u201d. This may be so, but as one ploughs into the first piece, an appreciation of US photo-artist Alfred Stieglitz\u2019s time editing the seminal journal Camera Work, it immediately becomes clear the collection is going to be anything but a casual read.<\/p>\n

Not that it lacks accessible moments. In a mere six pages, Bunnell\u2019s potted biography of Diane Arbus sketches in the highlights of her career in punchy, earthy prose that can\u2019t fail to engage even the most impatient reader. It contains striking insights, too: Arbus, unlike many of her modernist contemporaries, was a \u201cportraitist\u201d rather than a mere \u201cdocumentarian\u201d, we are told. Such is the clarity of the author\u2019s exposition, illustrated by a single, carefully chosen image \u2013 the self-explanatory A Jewish Giant at Home with his Parents in the Bronx, New York (1970) \u2013 that we can\u2019t help be convinced. <\/p>\n

Indeed, the most appealing aspect of many of the writings here is their brevity. The book\u2019s potpourri structure allows one to bypass \u201cchapters\u201d about practitioners in whom one is less interested, and skip to subsequent ones. So, if Ruth Bernhard isn\u2019t your thing, there\u2019s an equally incisive deconstruction of Barbara Morgan\u2019s work six pages on. Each can be read, and appreciated, in isolation \u2013 a \u201cpick and mix\u201d approach which exposes a distinct advantage of the anthology form. <\/p>\n

For all these pluses, there\u2019s one ingredient the book singularly lacks: photos. In more than 200 pages of text, there are barely 40. Admittedly, most of those used are stunning \u2013 from Emmet Gowin\u2019s erotically charged 1978 portrait of his wife, Edith, crouching in a field, to the gothic fairytale imagery of Small Woods Where I Met Myself (1967) by Jerry N Uelsmann. But the book\u2019s stodgier sections are, almost invariably, Bunnell\u2019s academic treatises on the merits of specific publications and exhibitions. Devoid of illustration, they also lack context.

James Morrison<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"Inside<\/a> Peter C Bunnell<\/span>
Published by Aperture
<\/span> \u00a316.95<\/span>
288pp Hardback

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