Icons of Photography: The 20th Century
Ninety seminal images by the world's greatest artists provide a stunning tour of the twentieth-century's greatest photographs. From the first image, Heinrich Zille's "Nine Boys Practising Handstands" to the final, Nan Goldin's backstage portrait of transvestite performers, this generously illustrated volume explores photography's impact on the way we experience the world. Every major photographer is represented in double-page spreads, which feature one full-page image, a brief essay on the...
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The 20th was the first full century to be documented photographically. To mark the occasion, Prestel offers Icons of Photography: The 20th Century, a richly illustrated volume that presents more than 90 of the century's most celebrated photographers. Each photographer's accomplishments are examined in an essay penned by one of nine prominent arts writers; the essays, arranged chronologically, are accompanied by a brief bio and examples of each artist's work. Icons of Photography: The 20th Century is an invaluable summing-up of the first full century of photography. In this excerpt, the prolific and influential career of Berenice Abbott is celebrated.Library JournalThe third of Prestel's "Icon" series, which is devoted to gathering landmark work from a featured medium, this chronological assembly of 90 photographers, from Berenice Abbott to Heinrich Zille, offers a carefully gathered spectrum of photography in this century. Each artist is given a two-page spread, including a portrait shot and an example of a key image; there are 165 images in all, representing the artists' best and most challenging work. In the hands of these daring practitioners, photography looks like a tool of revelation, with imagination, mystery, and the range of human experience on display throughout. These captured instants--framed, composed, labored over, and at times accidental--create an important legacy that will be reviewed for a long time to come. They also reveal what parts of the 20th century have looked like. Recommended for the value of its content and its careful, consistent presentation of great photography.--David Bryant, New Canaan P.L., CT Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.
Berenice Abbott\ Berenice Abbott learned her craft in Paris in the 1920s, apprenticing there to the surrealist Man Ray, befriending Eugène Atget (whose documentation of historic Paris -- a landmark in the evolution of photography -- she subsequently salvaged and preserved for posterity, almost single-handedly). She later claimed that she did not really consider New York a worthy subject for her imagery until she returned to it in 1929 with fresh eyes. By that time she had concluded that realism was her chosen medium's greatest strength. Seeing the city's rapid renovation, the new structures replacing the old, and inspired perhaps by Atget's archive, which captured the City of Light in its transition to modernity, she set out to depict in precise detail, and at great length, what one of her many books called "changing New York."\ In the image Designer's Window, Bleecker Street, New York, she applies to New York several of the lessons she had learned from Atget and Man Ray: first, that documentation of shopwindow displays reveals a great deal about the cultural zeitgeist; second, that these mercantile constructions often contain wonderfully surreal juxtapositions; third, that the attentive photographer can make strategic use of the reflections omnipresent in the urban environment to indicate the visual density of the metropolitan milieu.\ So, in the complacent Gotham of the post-World War II years, Abbott generated an image that functions at one and the same time as sociological evidence and child's tranquil, expectant "night before Christmas" dream. The column on the left, and the apartment building windows reflected in the storefront window's plate glass, place us immediately in the urban context; the reversed neon sign centered near the top of the image, "Village Bowling," allows anyone who knows the city to identify precisely the Greenwich Village spot; and there, in the midst of all that, floats one of Santa's reindeer, aglow, astride in midair, a magical vision in the midst of the mundane.\ At the time she made this image Abbott was almost two decades into her project, which by then had turned into one of the most comprehensive one-person photographic interpretations of any major metropolis ever undertaken, and remains a distinctive interpretation of New York as well as a priceless document thereof.\ --A. D. Coleman
ForewordPhotography of a Century: Three ViewsBerenice AbbottAnsel AdamsRobert AdamsDiane ArbusEugene AtgetEllen AuerbachRichard AvedonHerbert BayerCecil BeatonBernd and Hilla BecherIlse BingWerner BischofKarl BlossfeldtEdouard BoubatMargaret Bourke-WhiteBill BrandtBrassaiManuel Alvarez BravoRene BurriRobert CapaHenri Cartier-BressonMartin ChambiChargesheimerImogen CunninghamJohn DeakinRobert DoisneauWilliam EgglestonAlfred EisenstaedtEd van der ElskenTouhami EnnadreHugo ErfurthWalker EvansAndreas FeiningerGisele FreundLee FriedlanderMario GiacomelliRalph GibsonNan GoldinErnst HaasRobert HausserHeinz Hajek-HalkeLewis W. HineDavid HockneyHorst P. HorstLotte JacobiYousuf KarshAndre KerteszWilliam KleinAlberto KordaJosef KoudelkaDorothea LangeJacques-Henri LartigueHelen LevittSally MannRobert MapplethorpeWill McBrideJoel MeyerowitzLisette ModelTina ModottiLaszlo Moholy-NagyStefan MosesMartin MunkacsiArnold NewmanHelmut NewtonPaul Outerbridge, Jr.Gordon ParksIrving PennWalter PeterhansEliot PorterMan RayAlbert Renger-PatzschAlexander RodchenkoThomas RuffSebastiao SalgadoErich SalomonAugust SanderDavid SeymourCindy ShermanMalick SidibeW. Eugene SmithEdward SteichenOtto SteinertAlfred StieglitzPaul StrandJosef SudekYevgeny A. TschaldeyUmboJeff WallWeegeeEdward WestonGarry WinograndWolsHeinrich ZilleList of IllustrationsPhoto Credits
\ From Barnes & NobleThe 20th was the first full century to be documented photographically. To mark the occasion, Prestel offers Icons of Photography: The 20th Century, a richly illustrated volume that presents the work of more than 90 of the century's most celebrated photographers. Each photographer's accomplishments are examined in an essay penned by one of nine prominent arts writers; the essays, arranged chronologically, are accompanied by a brief bio and examples of each artist's work. Icons of Photography: The 20th Century is an invaluable summing up of the first full century of photography.\ \ \ \ \ Library JournalThe third of Prestel's "Icon" series, which is devoted to gathering landmark work from a featured medium, this chronological assembly of 90 photographers, from Berenice Abbott to Heinrich Zille, offers a carefully gathered spectrum of photography in this century. Each artist is given a two-page spread, including a portrait shot and an example of a key image; there are 165 images in all, representing the artists' best and most challenging work. In the hands of these daring practitioners, photography looks like a tool of revelation, with imagination, mystery, and the range of human experience on display throughout. These captured instants--framed, composed, labored over, and at times accidental--create an important legacy that will be reviewed for a long time to come. They also reveal what parts of the 20th century have looked like. Recommended for the value of its content and its careful, consistent presentation of great photography.--David Bryant, New Canaan P.L., CT Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.\ \
