The Genius of Photography

This book from the P&P reading list is a bit of a monster in size. It has good quality reproductions of the images and the colour ones are actually in colour!

The Genius of Photography: How photography has changed our lives - Gerry Badger

ISBN 978-1-84400-363-1

I've read it twice now. Once to just enjoy the subject matter and a second time to take notes. This is a bit of a time consuming thing to do and I don't do it for every book - but sometimes I get so engrossed I don't want to interrupt the flow to make notes. Also by doing a second reading I will have had time to digest the subject matter and any areas that seem a bit fuzzy to me can be re-read and re-interpreted. This was the case for the sections on Modernism. There were so many different ideas to take in under that one umbrella term. For instance, Structuralism, Formalism, how Surrealism grew out of Dadaism - a massive note taking session was required in the end.

I feel that I have a grasp of the concepts now and that when particular photographers or styles are referred to I can place them in context and not get my "isms" mixed up. I also bought the DVD version of the BBC series back when I was doing TAOP. I would say that the book covers the subject in more depth and is much more useful to photography students.

I enjoyed reading the book - although I did note the authors bias towards Straight photography came through at times. My copy came from the library but as it is only around £10 on Amazon I have added it to my (ever growing) wish list of books on photography.