Photo: Olivo Barbieri: Dolomites Project, 2010. © Olivo Barbieri.
Also: Bruce Davidson: On a Life in Photography
Ten years in the making, The Thames & Hudson Dictionary of Photography has just been released. Edited by Nathalie Herschdorfer, it includes more than 1,200 concise, fully cross-referenced entries developed in consultation with 150 professional experts, and built upon the scholarship of an international team of 77 researchers.
Lewis Wickes Hine, Steamfitter, 1921, Courtesy of Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C.
As Herschdorfer writes in the preface, “Photography was officially born in 1839, and its story is far from finished. There are certainly more images produced now than at any time before. Within this dictionary, you will find all the names, genres, movements and institutions that have made the medium what it is today. It embraces a vast variety of domains: art, advertising, journalism, fashion, politics, science and everyday life. Throughout its history photography has continued to develop through new chemical processes and technological advances, and its products can now we found in family albums, archives, museums, books, magazines and newspapers, and on walls and millions of computer screens.”
Andres Serrano, Piss Christ, 1987, Courtesy of the artist
In this way, The Thames & Hudson Dictionary of Photography becomes an indispensable reference volume for an exquisitely distilled compendium of the most significant contributions to the art. Here we are given the highlights of its cultural, technical, commercial, and philosophical history, spanning its practice around the globe since its inception. From “Abbas” to “Zoom lens” the dictionary details all aspects of the subject. Illustrated by more than 300 images, we both see and read the ways in which singular individuals created a new visual language that continues to evolve at an intoxicatingly rapid rate, luring countless people into the fold with its uncanny ability to transform the ephemeral into the eternal.
Guillaume-Benjamin Duchenne de Boulogne and Adrien Tournachon, illustration from the Mécanisme de la physionomie humaine (1862), Courtesy of Wellcome Images
“The Thames & Hudson Dictionary of Photography takes us back to an earlier way of engaging with information, giving us the opportunity to find and discover gems at our fingertips, reminding us that there’s nothing quite like the experience of the book itself. As Herschdorfer writes, “In the digital era, we often need to stop the flow of information and understand the connections that lead from past to present (and future)”, reminding us of the way a book offers a secluded space for a quiet moment to ourselves.
Miss Rosen is a New York-based writer, curator, and brand strategist. There is nothing she adores so much as photography and books. A small part of her wishes she had a proper library, like in the game of Clue. Then she could blaze and write soliloquies to her in and out of print loves.
