A History of Photography | George Eastman House
A history of photography written on the basis of the vast collection at the George Eastman House in Rochester. It’s a good general guide for anyone who wants a reference book on the main names and facts in the history of photography.
Covering from Daguerre to the 1990s, it couldn’t go into depth at any point. After giving an overview of the always-mentioned facts about Daguerre and Talbot, comes a long section with a geographical cross-section presenting photographs at various points in Italy, the Middle East and the Americas, taken in the first decades of the second half of the 19th century.
From then on, the focus shifts to great photographers and a personalization of photography in a kind of heroic saga fighting to be art, imitating art, emancipating itself from art, establishing itself as art and, at the same time, its vocation as a scientific, journalistic documentary and a record of the memory of ordinary citizens.
It’s a good book to have, but don’t expect new points of view, new names or insights. Although small, it is very well printed and very rich in the images chosen to illustrate it.