Books on the History of Photography?

[Michael Heald]

Hello! I've read the thread on magazines folks read. I thought I would start an off shoot.

One reason I scan/read magazines is to get a handle on who is photographing and what they are photographing.

I've gotten a handle on the different genres of photography - news, landscape, fashion, etc. Can anyone recommend a book on the history of photography?

I don't mean equipment, though that would be a part of it. I mean a book on how/when/why different genres of photography developed, who the icons of those genres were, and examples of their work. I'm curious to see how these genres have developed over the years and how the photos that I see being published currently relate to the roots of the genre to which a photo may belong. Best regards.

Mike

[Mark Sampson]

The classic work is by Beaumont Newhall- "The History of Photography". A great place to start.

[Greg Lockrey]

"The Blue and Gray in Black and White"
A History of Civil War Photogrphy
Bob Zeller

[tim atherton]

The classic work is by Beaumont Newhall- "The History of Photography". A great place to start.

it's pretty limiting though and rather seriously biased in many places. Does cover plenty of the basics though

[Jorge Gasteazoro]

it's pretty limiting though and rather seriously biased in many places. Does cover plenty of the basics though

So Atherton, do you have a Paddy quinn persona under this new software like you did in the old one? What is the matter, you dont have the balls to argue under your own name?.....

[Bill_1856]

The real classic is "The Origins of Photography," by Helmut Gernsheim, Thames and Hudson, NY, 1982, LOC 82-80979. I believe that his collection (probably the first serious attempt to collect photography as an art) ended up in Texas.

[Bill_1856]

As I was putting the Gernsheim back into my bookcase, right next to it I noticed one of my favorite photography books, "Bystander, a History of Street Photograpy," by Westerbeck and Meyerowitz, Bullfinch Press, 1994, ISBN 0-8212-1755-0. This one is VERY readable.

[paulr]

it's pretty limiting though and rather seriously biased in many places. Does cover plenty of the basics though

I'd agree with that. It was my text in college, but now it's more useful as a "history of the history of photography." Newhall wasn't much of a scholar; it's mostly a catalog and interpretation of stuff he liked, without any attention paid to anything else. A curator can be given a lot of slack for this kind of thing, but not a historian.

Most glaring, my 1982 edition of the book devotes a whopping 20 of it's 300 plus pages to the second half of the 20th century. It seems Mr. Newhall and his editors lost interest sometime after 1940.

I wish I could make another recommendation. I've seen some newer, more serious looking histories, but haven't bought any. Most of my research has been based on smaller books and articles. I'm curious to know what other people consider to be the new standard.

[tim atherton]

not really a history of photography book, but rather a history of photography books (and an idiosyncratic one at that...), but Martin Parr's and Gary Badger's "The Photobook: A History.
Volume I" is intriguing and fascinating as well as informative.

Eagerly awaiting Vol II due in September

(BTW - his new "Mexico" book is fun too - due out soon I think)

[Mike H.]

Newhall, as a curator, probably (just my uneducated guess) also had a "new world" bent. Since most original photography originated in Europe, is there a book written in English which chronicals the history of photography from a European scholar's viewpoint?

Also, from another viewpoint, the most interesting reading I've done has been biographies of photographers, stuff like Weston's daybooks, Walker Evans by James R. Mellow, O'Keeffee & Stieglitz by Benita Eisler and Ansel Adams by Mary Street Alinder. I've only scratched the surface there, so if there are others of that ilk that folks recommend, I'd love to know, too.