Fotografía Pública : Photography in Print 1919-1939 [Fotografia publica] (Spanish Edition) [Hardcover]

Horacio Fernández (Author), Horacio Fernandez (Author), Museo Nacional Centro d Arte Reina Sofía (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 2000

Essay by Horacio Fernandez.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

This handsome catalog documents an exhibit at Spain!s Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia devoted to photography and the phenomenon of modernity. As the introductory essay by exhibit curator Fernandez explains, from its invention photography has been a public medium, yet technological advances during the interwar years allowed large-scale reproduction and publication. Arranged alphabetically from Berenice Abbott to Piet Zwart, including Russian constructivists as well as photographers of the American WPA and FSA, each entry discusses the role of a specific photographer, designer, publication, or one of the many influential countries. With appropriately aesthetic graphic design, the volume includes beautifully reproduced color and black-and-white images of newspapers, magazines, books, posters, and other printed material. It offers parallel texts in Spanish and English and is recommended for all appropriate collections with an interest in art photography."James E. Van Buskirk, San Francisco P.L.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 274 pages
• Publisher: Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (April 1, 2000)
• Language: Spanish
• ISBN-10: 8480031352
• ISBN-13: 978-8480031356
• Product Dimensions: 11.5 x 9.7 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,396,497 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Critical Mass(es), April 26, 2000

By 

Peter W. Johnson (Connecticut) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Fotografía Pública : Photography in Print 1919-1939 [Fotografia publica] (Spanish Edition) (Hardcover)

I am a graphic designer, photographer, and book collector. Fotografia Publica is an assemblage of pages that drives all three of my passions. The typography is sophisticated insofar as it is lively without upstaging the contents. The photographs are presented on the public stage of literature for the masses. Such a presentation underscores the vitality of camerawork that baffels even its practitioners. How can something so commonplace be so compelling. This catalog captures a spirit that fades (no, bleaches paler than white) in light of our contemporary reliance of stock photography to fill the bill. Here was an age where photography was a language and not a downloadable, royalty-free commodity. As the director of MNCARS, José Guirao Cabrera, states in the foreword: "A 20th-century art museum has the duty to examine one of the few occasions in which high culture has used the channels of low culture while maintaining (and even surpassing) the highest levels of quality."

My third passion, books, richochets and caroms in a mirror-world of simultaneous presentation of images of images in books. To turn the pages is to hold these photomontages in your hands, unsliced by the four edges of clean-to-the-edges historical approach. Here are pictures of books, shadows and all. Not just a transcript of what was said, but noise in the background. The crowds cheering. This catalog does not excerpt, but seems to pull up mass-culture's phenomenal treasures roots and all. The paper of the catalog becomes soil for these roots. The book is printed on an uncoated stock that invokes page turning and texture and the quiet light that must have layered the originals in a friable texture of utility and startling imagination. Turn the pages; turn the soil. Buy this book.

Peter W. Johnson

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A PRECEDENT SETTING COLLECTION, October 8, 2001

By 

ZENEVOKR (Chicago, Illinois) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Fotografía Pública : Photography in Print 1919-1939 [Fotografia publica] (Spanish Edition) (Hardcover)

Fotografia Publica set's a precedent and standard in its unparalleled collection of layout/graphic design culled from turn of the century print media. No serious visual communication, new media or art student should be without it! This book takes you into the "modern past" as you will see...what is contemporary is actually rather old. If you want an education in layout design BUY THIS BOOK!