The Genius of Photography - Gerry Badger (2006)
It seems every book I have read recently is trying to fulfil the same aim, that of documenting the history of photography.
I will admit however that whilst Badger’s ‘The Genius of Photography: How photography has changed our lives’ is structured in that familiar way, it’s differs in the actual content.
Where other books see to pull the same information, rather dryly at that, from each other and presenting essentially that same information in the same structure, Badger here does a fine job of focusing the attention on specific practitioners, movements and images. Rather than bombarding the reader with an endless list of quotes, critics and practitioners there is a clearer narrative to follow. This is supported by the wealth of large format images which are reproduced accordingly and each with its own contextualisation which mirrors the adjacent paragraphs.
It would seem a rather straight forward way to structure a book on this subject but it has become quite the trend to read overwhelming large amounts of wide ranging information which is underwhelming in insight and represented by the apparently standard collection of images.
Overall I really enjoyed the read. Badger does hold respect for several photographers which I don’t necessarily share, such as Bellocq and Crewdson but overall I find that Badger has plenty to share on all the key players as well as several female and international practitioners I hadn’t previously considered. Something which is still surprisingly absent from many books on the medium, even today 15 years after the publication of this particular book.
There are a couple of critiques I would raise, the first being the title and how this book is less of a discussion on how photography changed or lives and more on how it changed art, or how photography has changed. I feel Badger touches on the titular subject but rather briefly and only in one section. I suppose this issue reflects back to the publication date and how it somewhat pre-dates the significant changes to the medium and its dissemination in the recent. Voile internet era.
Another critique I would raise is that does sometimes repeat the same point over again writhing a couple of pages, I’m not sure if this is an editing issue, an attempt to pad the story or just a re-emphasised of the information.
Finally, I would also say that whilst Badger does do a great job of referencing several quotes into the discussion as well as delving further in to the subjects and practitioners by sharing more on their backstory than is typical, Badger does also stop short of decisively defining his own particular views. His approach is more an allusion to preference, one which we decipher through the selected artists and the obvious omissions.
Going forward I feel this book will be an excellent reference for my future work, the information contained here is depthful and often quite unique to this book when compared to the rest of my library.
I feel it’s quite telling that Badger decided to close this book with the same quote I selected to open my first essay with back in Context and narrative, “The illiterate of the future will be the man who does not understand photography” - Mohaly-Nagy.
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