Description
The Pleasures of Good Photographs is an intellectual and aesthetic excursion led by Gerry Badger, one of photography’s eminent critics and popular writers. In this new volume of essays, Badger offers insight into some of his favorite images, artists, and themes, drawing upon nearly three decades of writing and thinking about photography. With deep discernment and a readable mixture of scholarly finesse and wit, Badger describes the meanings of work by dozens of photographers, from Dorothea Lange and Eugéne Atget to Martin Parr, Luc Delahaye, Susan Lipper, and Paul Graham. Among the broader topics discussed are the photobook—where Badger believes “photography sings its loudest and most complex song”—and Photoshop’s role in art-making. An interlude at the heart of the book pairs the author’s evocative meditations with nearly a dozen thought provoking images. The Pleasures of Good Photographsshowcases primarily new essays, with a few classics thrown in for good measure, making it an important addition to the canon of photographic writing.
Gerry Badger, a photography critic for nearly thirty years, is himself a photographer, as well as an architect and curator. He has written for dozens of periodicals and his previous books include The Photobook: A History, Volumes I and II, coauthored with Martin Parr, and The Genius of Photography: How Photography Has Changed Our Lives, a companion volume to the esteemed BBC television series. Badger lives in London.
The Pleasures of Good Photographs: Essays by Gerry Badger
€30.00
1 in stock
Description
The Pleasures of Good Photographs is an intellectual and aesthetic excursion led by Gerry Badger, one of photography’s eminent critics and popular writers. In this new volume of essays, Badger offers insight into some of his favorite images, artists, and themes, drawing upon nearly three decades of writing and thinking about photography. With deep discernment and a readable mixture of scholarly finesse and wit, Badger describes the meanings of work by dozens of photographers, from Dorothea Lange and Eugéne Atget to Martin Parr, Luc Delahaye, Susan Lipper, and Paul Graham. Among the broader topics discussed are the photobook—where Badger believes “photography sings its loudest and most complex song”—and Photoshop’s role in art-making. An interlude at the heart of the book pairs the author’s evocative meditations with nearly a dozen thought provoking images. The Pleasures of Good Photographsshowcases primarily new essays, with a few classics thrown in for good measure, making it an important addition to the canon of photographic writing.
Gerry Badger, a photography critic for nearly thirty years, is himself a photographer, as well as an architect and curator. He has written for dozens of periodicals and his previous books include The Photobook: A History, Volumes I and II, coauthored with Martin Parr, and The Genius of Photography: How Photography Has Changed Our Lives, a companion volume to the esteemed BBC television series. Badger lives in London.
Additional information
Related products
Aperture Masters of Photography: Walker Evans
The photography of Walker Evans (1903-75) is introduced in a new, redesigned and expanded edition of Aperture’s classic book from its Masters of Photography series. Evans helped define documentary photography and is considered one of the most influential artists of the 20th century. He captured the American experience from the late 1920s to the early 1970s with graceful articulation.
From 1935 to 1937, Evans documented rural America during the Great Depression while working for the Farm Security Administration. Much of Evans’ work from that period focused on three sharecropping families in southern Alabama, culminating in the revolutionary 1941 photobook Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, with text by James Agee. His enduring appreciation for inanimate, seemingly ordinary objects and the vernacular as subject matter is evident in his photographs of shop windows, rural churches, billboards and architecture. Photography historian David Campany contributes a new introduction and image commentary to this volume, which includes some of Evans’ best known and loved photographs.
Revelations: Diane Arbus
Diane Arbus Revelations affords the first opportunity to explore the origins, scope, and aspirations of what is a wholly original force in photography. Arbus’s frank treatment of her subjects and her faith in the intrinsic power of the medium have produced a body of work that is often shocking in its purity, in its steadfast celebration of things as they are. Presenting many of her lesser-known or previously unpublished photographs in the context of the iconic images reveals a subtle yet persistent view of the world.
Words not spent today buy smaller images tomorrow: David Levi Strauss
At this transitional moment in the field of photography, how should we consider what is to come for the medium? Can its past and present practitioners help guide us, both as creators and as observers? David Levi Strauss—eminent author, critic, and teacher—rises to the challenge of these questions and more in Words Not Spent Today Buy Smaller Images Tomorrow: Essays on the Past and Future of Photography.
Words Not Spent Today is an incisive exploration of photography’s changing role as a tool of evidence and conscience as we move forward into—can we say it?—a post-photographic era.
Image Studies – Theory and Practice: Sunil Manghani
A wide range of illustrations complement the text throughout and each chapter includes creative tasks, keywords (linked to an online resource), summaries and suggested further reading. In addition, each of the main chapters include selected readings by notable authors across a range of subject areas, including: Art History, Business, Cognitive Science, Communication Studies, Infographics, Neuroscience, Photography, Physics, Science Studies, Social Semiotics, Statistics, and Visual Culture.