The Photograph (Oxford History of Art) [Hardcover]

Graham Clarke (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 8, 1997 | Series: Oxford History of Art

How do we read a photograph? In this rich and fascinating work, Graham Clarke gives a clear and incisive account of the photograph's historical development, and elucidates the insights of the most engaging thinkers on the subject, such as Roland Barthes and Susan Sontag. From the first misty "heliograph" taken by Joseph Nicephore Niepce in 1826 to the classic compositions of Cartier-Bresson and Alfred Steiglitz and the striking postmodern strategies of Robert Mapplethorpe, Clarke provides a groundbreaking examination of photography's main subject areas--landscape, the city, portraiture, the body, and reportage--as well as a detailed analysis of exemplary images in terms of their cultural and ideological contexts. With over 130 illustrations, The Photograph offers a series of discussions of major themes and genres providing an up-to-date introduction to the history of photography and creating a record of the most dazzling, penetrating, and pervasive images of our time.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Clarke (literary and image studies, Univ. of Kent, Canterbury) contributes one of the first entries in a series of short texts now being published by Oxford that treat aspects of art history. A vast amount has been written about photography, its history, its practitioners and processes, its influences as an art medium, and its power as a documentary medium, and anyone hoping to write a succinct book on the subject is bound to come up short in one or more of these areas. This high-speed, wholly inadequate survey of photography's early years leaves out a sense of the process of discovering and extending photography's capabilities. The bulk of the subject-oriented chapters deal with photography of landscapes, cities, human forms, and events. Throughout, Clarke attempts to focus the discourse on how photographs convey their meaning. The reproduction quality is good, and the images selected from the 20th century are often quite provocative and memorable. An introductory text for large history of photography and general art history collections.?Kathleen Collins, New York Transit Museum Archives, Brooklyn
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"For more than 170 years, photographs have redefined the way people see themselves and the world they inhabit. The story of how this happened is revealed in insightful words, but most of all, marvellous pictures, in The Photograph" Kitchener-Waterloo Record

`A readable text discusses the way in which we see and interpret photographs.' The Bookseller

`Fully and often surprisingly illustrated, carefully annotated and captioned, each combines a historical overview with a nicely opinionated individual approach.' Independent on Sunday

`Read this book and you will never look at a photograph in the same way again.' House and Garden

`concise yet comprehensive, and wonderful value' The Irish Times (Dublin)

`An engaging, image-studded survey... Clarke is particularly good at playing two images off against one another to emphasise the cultural assumptions underlying each... Clarke raises fascinating questions about how the portrait seeks to encode social identity. In his representation of landscape, he deftly covers both the picturesque tradition and its opposite, the scientific orientation that viewed photography as a means of mapping and administering land.' V. Penelope Pelizzon, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science Vol.40 No.2

`Clarke does an admirable job of condensing theoretical debates concerning the reading of images' Yorkshire Post (Leeds)

`An important part of the Oxford History of Art series ... It's an enormous subject, but it's tackled in a tremendously accessible manner. A must for anyone interested in taking seriously good pictures.' Swansea South Wales Evening Post

`a superb piece of publishing' Rupert Christiansen, Spectator --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 248 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (May 8, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 019284248X
• ISBN-13: 978-0192842480
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.7 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #527,181 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Defense, April 27, 2007

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Charles Comer (Baltimore, Maryland) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Photograph (Oxford History of Art) (Hardcover)

In defense of Mr. Clarke I offer the following: Photography is one of the most philosophically difficult art forms. Sure, one can apply similar aesthetic concepts and ideas--both formal and conceptual--to the photograph that one can to paintings and sculpture, but there are ideas that set the photograph apart from these other media. This is what people like Clark and Michael Fried are trying to do in their approach to photography. And, apropos of Oxford (especially this series), this is, after all, a scholarly work; not a survey of the coolest photographs of the last forty years. You cannot fault the book or the writer for not doing what you want it or him to do. That being said, the History of Art series by Oxford is precisely where one should go should one choose to ask the "whys" of art--not the who's, the what's or the how's. And, I'm sorry, but "why" questions and answers typically do not suppose a leisurely read. This is not to exalt these questions, nor denigrate the others, only to elucidate the playing field.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Superb, Powerful & Economically Written (SUPERB imagery too), August 13, 2009

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Jonathan (Los Angeles, CA, United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Photograph (Oxford History of Art) (Paperback)

Most people would rather die than think - and, indeed, they do. - Bertrand Russell

I AM aware of some of the panning going on against this book in the USA - the same sort of panning that one can see frequently happening against Sontag's On Photography, which is ABSOLUTELY one of the most direct and succinct meditations on the medium I have yet seen. Precisely WHY it is that Americans seem to take such an anti-intellectual approach to these things is a bit beyond me. There seems to be, however, two distinct places from which persons unnamed approach thinking about the photograph (not totally unlike the two categories established at the start of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance) - the 'Ansel Adams Classicists' and the 'Marxist Empiricists'. The first school considers any psychological inspection of the photograph an all-out assault on the sanctity of the soul and fertile hand of the artist-genius. To explore the production of art-objects within an intellectual, social and political framework is not just offensive - it's downright 'off the map'! Granted - there IS a culture of persons who subscribe to the Frankfurt School and October Magazine but don't understand it. And hell yeah - they give the 'art' crowd a bad name. But that's REALLY not what's going on here - please trust me. If you'd like to be a little more convinced of this please see the corresponding review on amazon's UK sister site. You'll find nothing but praise for this little ditty there.

For me - this book was clearly written and the thoughts expressed inside extremely well organized. I found it valuable, provocative and fruitful. A deeply worthy investment for those who are open to the idea of reframing existing knowledge in a larger and more sociably responsible way. The choice of phtoographs in this book was superb, I thought. A straight-up who's who of the more radical 'contemporary artist' oriented branch of the medium - the trailblazers from decades past - the people who made the starn twins and jeff wall and struths and others possible in the first place. If you want to cultivate a deep understanding of the photograph and it's importance in the world of art -especially contemporary art - this book is REQUIRED reading! Do your brain a favor and pick up a copy - and see some of the most powerful art of the 20th century while you're at it.

22 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Toiletworthy, June 16, 2001

By A Customer

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This review is from: The Photograph (Oxford History of Art) (Paperback)

I've read scores of books about photography history and criticism but have rarely encountered such an unbearable load of relentlessly postmodernist-deconstructionist-postcolonialist-genderbending cultural theory. Certainly there is room for such perspectives and they may provide certain insights into certain photographic subject matter. I welcome and applaud such efforts when they are well done. But please, if occasionally a cigar is just a cigar, can't the same be true of a humble photograph? Alas, no. At least not to Clarke, who sees every photo as built on a foundation of past political incorrectness, which he proceeds to survey like an archeologist examining the strata of a Pompein latrine. Viewing what purports to be the entirety of the history of photography in this monocular manner leaves us in this case with no history of photography at all. Clarke's shrill voice and accusing finger would be insufferable even if the reader didn't get the distinct impression that Clarke believes himself to be delivering the most stunning elucidation of fundamental human truths since Aristotle peripatetically paced about the Lyceum. Given what Oxford may well have offered in such a volume, this fatuous manifesto is all the more a pity.