Photo Icons Volume 1 features
20 important photographs from the start of the field in 1827 up to the work of
Man Ray in 1926.  It explains the development of photography and the particular
context of the works under scrutiny.  It is a nicely produced book, with the
usual quality of Taschen, and since it is just 191 pages long, each chapter is
quite short.  In the chapter on the photograph by Duchenne de Boulogne,
entitled “Contraction musculaires,” Koetzle discusses the
circumstances of the taking of the picture s a doctor provokes a reaction in a
patient by passing an electric current through the muscles in his head, causing
a very startled and almost horrified look.  The chapter includes two other
pictures from the same series, which are also quite well known.  Since these
photographs were taken so long ago, it seems we have very little certain
information about the original photographers or their motives.  Furthermore, at
least in the nineteenth century, the medium of photography was so new that it
was creating its own genres, and the distinctions between art, documentation
and experimentation were not clearly drawn.  It it only in the twentieth
century, with photographers such as Alfred Stieglitz, Jacques-Henri Lartigue,
August Sander and Man Ray started creating works that fell into the categories
with which we are now quite familiar. 

Koetzle provides a useful
introduction to the early history of photography, but does not provide much
help to readers in the decoding of these important images.  Most of the
information he gives is biographical and historical; even in his discussion of
Maurice Guibert’s “Toulouse-Lautrec in His Studio,” (1894), he does
not say much about the relation of painting to photography.   So for readers
looking for thorough analyses of these early works will want to look elsewhere
for works on the history of photography, but Photo Icons Volume 1 is a
pleasing introduction to the basics and it is a real pleasure to some of these
striking images. 

Links:

• Publisher’s
  web page
• Duchenne de Boulogne
  famous photographs

© 2005 Christian
Perring. All rights reserved. 

Christian
Perring, Ph.D., is Academic Chair of the Arts & Humanities
Division and Chair of the Philosophy Department at Dowling College, Long Island.
He is also editor of Metapsychology Online Review.  His main
research is on philosophical issues in medicine, psychiatry and psychology.

Categories: ArtAndPhotography