Sarah Kennel

While I was quite impressed with Charles Marville's urban photography that recorded the massive reconstruction and redesign that was occuring in Paris during his lifetime, I found the essays that accompanied the photos to be an absolute bore to read. They were not compelling at all, and seemed more concerned with imparting facts and dates than exploring the motives behind Marville's work or the themes that he captured. I managed to read the introductory/biographical section, but I gave up completely for the remaining essays and focused instead on simply enjoying the photos included in the book.… (más)

A very nice book. The entry for each process provides a fairly technical, though abbreviated, description, a summary of historical usage, the inventor and major practitioners, a representative photograph and, frequently, an enlargement of a segment of the photograph to illustrate characteristic textures or image patterns. Although the arrangement is alphabetical, the various processes are color coded so that any process (such as halftone) can be associated with others with which it has an affinity (like collotype), even though they are not in alphabetical propinquity.… (más)