A New History of Photography: A collection of images and historical & analytical texts.

Edited by Michel Frizot (34 contributoring authors)<br>

Published by Koehemann VmbH ©1994 (French) and © 1998 (English ISBN 3-8290-1328-0)

<p>This is a weighty tome, nearly 800 pages in all. It was created with the assistance of the "Arts Commision of the Centre National du Livre", part of the French Ministry of Culture.

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The 41 chapters (or perhaps, "essays") and dozen photographic 'dossiers' attempt to track the development of photography in all its senses: technical; artistic; journalistic; commercial and amateur.

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Being still some way from reading it all my comments must be somewhat superficial. But here goes anyway - my comments:<ul>

<li> This is a seriously encylopedic reference to the development of photography. <br>Don't expect to see minutae on push processing C41 - do expect to see a discussion on the history of each major class of process. And the results this had on, say, commerical advertising. Or the copyright problems with sterophotography.

<li> It is historical. <br>Much of the content is pre 1950 - some chapters stretch back as far as the eighteenth century. But, like modern art, photography didn't start with Andy Warhol. (Yes, he's in there)

<li> It's not about the mechanics of cameras themselves. <br>Nor about how-to tutorials on using a camera or darkroom. What it does cover are the cultural and artistic repercussions of technical breakthroughs.

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<p>I do believe that this has a place as a reference book for serious students of photography. Even "purely commercial" photogs should find it useful simply for the variety of compositional examples it contains.