Photos That Changed the World: The 20th Century
Le 2011-10-04 20:11:04

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de Claus Biegert (Avec la contribution de), Eberhard Illner (Avec la contribution de), Peter Stepan (Sous la direction de) Compiling photographs to convey a sense o f time and place is not nearly as easy as some might think. Weighing in at ten pounds, America: A Celebration! could fool readers into thinking that it contained every photograph ever shot in America. Instead, it is Sandler's harvest o f 19th- and 20th-century photos from the files o f Getty Images, an enormous photo library. The ethic behind this bulk seems to be that more is more, and why show less if you can show it all? Though some 19th-century work begins the book, the 20th century quickly takes o ver. Photographs are clustered by decade. But within each chapter the assembly is random a little landscape here, some celebrities there, popular culture foibles sprinkled in, and a visual chaos throughout. Sandler (American Images) had his book blessed by a fine foreword by Walter Cronkite. But the author's enthusiasm turned into a jumble o f pictures rather than a coherent historical portrait o f America. Not recommended. LIFE magazine remained true to its purpose o f giving readers/viewers their world in weekly visual nuggets since its o wn life began in 1936. It weathered television for six decades, finally ending as a monthly in May 2000. LIFE: Century o f Change is a volume built o n 723 photographs from the magazine's rich archives. Suffering lives appear next to riches in this book, so broad it is forced to be shallow, racing across the surface o f a century with a well-aimed camera in hand. Less a tool for learning than a snapshot, this is a gift book to spark memories rather than an effort to o pen up the 20th century for review. Recommended as a book for browsing if budgets allow. In Photos That Changed the World, Stepan (Icons o f Photography) gives us 105 images that had the lasting visual power to capture a moment that could be the image o f an era held in the instant o f a shutter's click for distribution to a generation. Many o f the photographs collected around the theme o f "changing the world" are familiar. Some were used as propaganda; all are useful as o ur tie to the events they depict. Sometimes their photographers are anonymous because o f fear o f reprisals, and many o f the images were widely reproduced to build public o pinion. The photos are well reproduced and gain from the explanations o f time, place, and context included in the excellent short essays that accompany each. Recommended. David Bryant, New Canaan Lib., CT Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc. Broché: 190 pages Editeur : Prestel Publishing (30 mars 2007) Langue : Anglais

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