Product Details

• Actors: Ansel Adams, Andy Warhol
• Format: Color, NTSC
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Number of tapes: 2
• Studio: Kultur Video
• VHS Release Date: April 15, 2003
• Run Time: 260 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B00008DDSS
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #425,035 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars 10-part series on two DVDs, August 16, 2006

By 

bsg2004 - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The Adventure of Photography (DVD)

I am not a self-appointed authority on the topic, so please don't expect an in-depth review from me :-)

Each episode runs for about 25 minutes including the opening/closing credits.

The 10 parts are:

1) Precursors

2) Surrealists

3) War photography

4) Portraitists

5) Photoreporters

6) Fashion photography

7) Nudes

8) Photography & Science

9) Amateur Photography

10)Photographic market

It touches upon the majority of the topics and issues of photography, and includes (a younger) Herb Ritz as a guest commentator among others. Some people may find its style, dvd menu design, or music a bit quirky or off(beat). I found the content quite interesting overall, given how rare it is to find serialized documentaries on photography. The only other one I recall is "The Language of Photography" that aired/airs on some PBS stations.

56 of 73 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Wasted Opportunity, November 2, 2004

By 

Cyndra MacDowall (Windsor, Ontario Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Adventure of Photography (DVD)

I ordered this DVD for my University Library. I will not show this DVD to my students until I can turn off the sound & replace it with my own voice. A 1-star is because there is no option for 0 or negative stars in the rating scale. I have never written a review for Amazon.ca but I am inspired by the wasted opportunity to write this. I purchased this DVD in hopes that it might offer the opportunity to provide a compact teaching aid of an overview of photography history. Indeed it does provide a compact history of photograpy --- completely ignorant of the important thinking around photography & representation since 1980. My despair is that these ignorant, but canny, authors have managed to soporificly subvert the enlivening re-evaluation of photography as the most significant & controversial invention of the 19th Century & enduringly significant in the 21st C. These authors are canny enough to include images by those photographers conventionally considered important to photo history in the 1990s, but overlaid with a 1970s heroic modernist perspective in the voiceover.
I've only viewed the First Part (there are many more) and it is striking that this DVD is predominantly French speakers, not Québecois, in translation. Yikes! Barthes wrote Camera Lucida sometime in the early 80s. The one Anglophone speaks of technology in a surprisingly complex way -- compared to the voice over & the other talking heads.
This is sad. So many good images of importance NOW, interpreted from uncomprehending authority.
Oh, funding powers that be, please give me the money to make 2 DVDs on the histories of photography & I will make something interesting and usuable & current.
If you buy this (that Brassai cover is seductive - hence, the canny) you will be disappointed.
Cyndra MacDowall, School of Visual Arts University of Windsor, Ontario, Canada.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An Informative TV Series from the BBC, January 18, 2008

By 

Ravenseye (Tofino, BC Canada) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Adventure of Photography (DVD)

This two-DVD set is a 10-part TV series from the BBC, produced about a decade ago. Each segment is approximately 25 minutes and covers a specific genre of professional photography -- war, photojournalism, fashion, et cetera -- with lots of examples and cameos by leading practitioners of each genre. Although a tad dated (the segment on future developments has been completely outrun already) and made to a British sensibility, it is an interesting and informative series, worth a look.