Each Wild Idea: Writing, Photography, History by Geoffrey Batchen


Each Wild Idea: Writing, Photography, History
Title : Each Wild Idea: Writing, Photography, History
Author :
Rating :
ISBN : 0262523248
ISBN-10 : 9780262523240
Language : English
Format Type : Paperback
Number of Pages : 258
Publication : First published February 8, 2001

Essays on photography and the medium's history and evolving identity. In Each Wild Idea , Geoffrey Batchen explores a wide range of photographic subjects, from the timing of the medium's invention to the various implications of cyberculture. Along the way, he reflects on contemporary art photography, the role of the vernacular in photography's history, and the Australianness of Australian photography. The essays all focus on a consideration of specific photographs—from a humble combination of baby photos and bronzed booties to a masterwork by Alfred Stieglitz. Although Batchen views each photograph within the context of broader social and political forces, he also engages its own distinctive formal attributes. In short, he sees photography as something that is simultaneously material and cultural. In an effort to evoke the lived experience of history, he frequently relies on sheer description as the mode of analysis, insisting that we look right at—rather than beyond—the photograph being discussed. A constant theme throughout the book is the question of photography's past, present, and future identity.

Each Wild Idea: Writing, Photography, History Reviews

  • Jason

    Prof. Batchen was on my honor's committee in college so i have to put a good rating on here. Actually, it is really intersting and i recommend this to anyone interested in the history and applicatino of photography.

  • Pat

    Brilliant, dense, rewarding, if you are really interested in photography.

  • Margot Note

    Some great quotes about Corbis:

    “By dominating the market in electronic reproductions, Gates has also acquired a measure of control over what many might have naively thought to be a public resource: history. Remember that image of Truman holding up the premature issue of the Chicago Daily Tribune declaring his defeat by Dewey? It is in the Corbis catalogue. Remember Malcolm X pointing out over his crowd of listeners, the airship Hindenburg exploding in the New Jersey sky, that naked Vietnamese child running toward us after being burned by napalm, Churchill flashing his V-for-victory sign, Dorothea Lange’s Migrant Mother, Patty Hearst posing with her gun in front of the Symbionese Liberation Army banner, LBJ being sworn into office aboard Air Force One beside a blood-spattering Jackie? Corbis offers to lease us electronic versions of them all. It offers to sell us, in other words, the ability to reproduce our memories of our own culture, and therefore of ourselves” (150).

    And

    “All that Corbis owns are the electronic reproduction rights to certain of [Ansel:] Adams’s images. The assumption is that in the near future, electronic reproduction is the only kind that is going to mater. The other assumption in play here is that reproduction is already the only aspect of an image worth owning. The world’s richest man has declared in no uncertain terms that the original print—always a contradiction in terms for photography in any case—is of absolutely no interest. He does not want to accumulate photographs; he just wants to be able to sell endless reproductions of them. He seeks not to control photography but the total flow of photo data” (151).

  • Velvetink

    [Geoffrey_Batchen]_Each_Wild_Idea_Writing,_Photog(BookFi.org)pdf