An American Century of Photography, from Dry-Plate to Digital
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Drawing on Hallmark's major picture collection, Davis, the company's fine arts program director, here chronicles the technical and artistic evolution of photography since the 1880s in a richly produced accompaniment to a current traveling exhibition. The project's sweep is all-inclusive, reflecting cultural change from 19th-century sentimentality?and later a literal documentation of war, misery and disaster?to a "circular process of signification" seen by critics in today's fragmentation, construction and print manipulation for avant-garde experiments. More a reference source than a leisurely read, this tome nevertheless offers pleasant surprises and illuminates photography's amateur enthusiasms, social commentary, artistic innovation and technical achievement over the years.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
The primary purpose of this lavish, scholarly book is to catalog the Hallmark Cards company's holdings in twentieth-century photography. But it also testifies that Hallmark's curator for the past 15 years, Keith Davis, has put his intelligent mark on an impressively extensive collection that is full of classic images yet offers a few delightful surprises--such as George Platt Lynes' 1941 portrait of Paul Cadmus, Ralph Steiner's 1928 still life of coffee cups and clocks, and William Klein's Swing & Boy & Girl of 1955. Davis is a lucid writer, and citing photographic magazine criticism extensively in his text, he well conveys the climate of each period of twentieth-century photography. Straining at the constraints of his title, he includes several Europeans in his section on early modernism, but in truth that period cannot be understood without seeing examples of Europeans like Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Francis Brugiere, Ilse Bing, and Florence Henri. The only great complaint to be made is that photographs by women make up only 19 percent of the 207 plates, which misrepresents the importance of women in twentieth-century American photography as a whole. Gretchen Garner
Begun in 1964 and currently one of the largest and highest quality corporate art collections, the Hallmark Photographic Collection is both the subject of this book and of a major exhibition that will be traveling through 1996. The advent of dry-plate photography in the mid-1880s marked the entrance of talented amateurs and professionals newly freed from the burdens of collodion wet-plate photography. From that point of departure, Davis follows the progression of aesthetic movements and outlines their changing social, artistic, and technological contexts, dividing the text and illustrations into four 25-year periods. Davis's text provides a particularly well-written and -researched survey, and the chapter bibliographies and lists of photographers (with bibliographies for each) make the book a useful reference as well. Although the focus is on American photographers working here and abroad, some European emigres are included (e.g., Andre Kertesz and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy), and next to the well-known some less-familiar names are given a place (e.g., Lillian Bassman, Lois Conner, Charles Moore). From naturalism to appropriated images and everything in between, all periods and styles are represented. The reproductions could not be finer. Recommended for history of photography and American studies collections.
Kathleen Collins, New York Transit Museum Archives, Brooklyn
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
The primary purpose of this lavish, scholarly book is to catalog the Hallmark Cards company's holdings in twentieth-century photography. But it also testifies that Hallmark's curator for the past 15 years, Keith Davis, has put his intelligent mark on an impressively extensive collection that is full of classic images yet offers a few delightful surprises--such as George Platt Lynes' 1941 portrait of Paul Cadmus, Ralph Steiner's 1928 still life of coffee cups and clocks, and William Klein's Swing & Boy & Girl of 1955. Davis is a lucid writer, and citing photographic magazine criticism extensively in his text, he well conveys the climate of each period of twentieth-century photography. Straining at the constraints of his title, he includes several Europeans in his section on early modernism, but in truth that period cannot be understood without seeing examples of Europeans like Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Francis Brugiere, Ilse Bing, and Florence Henri. The only great complaint to be made is that photographs by women make up only 19 percent of the 207 plates, which misrepresents the importance of women in twentieth-century American photography as a whole. Gretchen Garner
Begun in 1964 and currently one of the largest and highest quality corporate art collections, the Hallmark Photographic Collection is both the subject of this book and of a major exhibition that will be traveling through 1996. The advent of dry-plate photography in the mid-1880s marked the entrance of talented amateurs and professionals newly freed from the burdens of collodion wet-plate photography. From that point of departure, Davis follows the progression of aesthetic movements and outlines their changing social, artistic, and technological contexts, dividing the text and illustrations into four 25-year periods. Davis's text provides a particularly well-written and -researched survey, and the chapter bibliographies and lists of photographers (with bibliographies for each) make the book a useful reference as well. Although the focus is on American photographers working here and abroad, some European emigres are included (e.g., Andre Kertesz and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy), and next to the well-known some less-familiar names are given a place (e.g., Lillian Bassman, Lois Conner, Charles Moore). From naturalism to appropriated images and everything in between, all periods and styles are represented. The reproductions could not be finer. Recommended for history of photography and American studies collections.
Kathleen Collins, New York Transit Museum Archives, Brooklyn
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
ISBN 10: 0810919648 ISBN 13: 9780810919648
Publisher: Harry Abrams, 1995
424 pages 499 illustrations, including 448 in tritone and 48 in full color. Hardcover Edition. Foreword by Donald J. Hall. Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged. Bibliography and Index.