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Rating: 
Summary: Nice 20th C. Photography Overview, But Title Is Problematic
Review: This paperback accompanies an exhibition that was held at the Museum of New Mexico between October 2002 and January 2003. It's too bad that this museum is not as well known as (say) the Whitney or the Guggenheim in New York, and that the editors (Steve Yates and Siegfried Halus) are not as famous as (say) John Szarkowski, because the book is a must for people who are interested in artistic photography.
The core of the book consists of almost 100 pages of 1905-1999 color and black & white photographs, collages, and montages categorized under the headings "Early to Late Modernism" and "After Modernism." Under "Early to Late Modernism" (pp.16-91) we find the thematic groups "Proto-Modern Photography," "Limitations of the Medium," "Modern Form in Architecture, Landscape & Portraiture," "Photogram Aesthetic," "Constructed to Be Photographed," "Self as Subject and Simulacra," "Beyond Realism," "Cultural Landscape," and "Postmodern Appropriation." Under "After Modernism" (pp.92-115) we find the thematic groups "From the Avant-Garde," "Beyond the Medium," and "Feminism as Ethos." The works are from Museum of Fine Arts in Santa Fe, the Princeton University Art Museum, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. There is a note that "not all images in the exhibition appear in this catalog."
The photographers (or artists using photography) include Berenice Abbott, Ansel Adams, Robert Adams, Max Alpert, Eleanor Antin, Dieter Appelt, Karl Baden, Lewis Baltz, Rudolph Baranik, Thomas Barrow, Irene Bayer-Hecht, Bernd Becher, Hilla Becher, Michael Berman, Mieczyclaw Berman, Jayne Hinds Bidaut, Ilse Bing, Christian Boltanski, Margaret Bourke-White, Manuel Alvarez Bravo, Marilyn Bridges, Francis Bruguière, Vladimir Brylyakov, Harry Callahan, John Candelario, Paul Caponigro, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Walter Chappell, Sarah Charlesworth, Natasha Cherkashin, Valery Cherkashin, Larry Clark, William Clift, Alvin Langdon Coburn, Van Deren Coke, John Collier Jr., Linda Connor, Robert H. Cumming, Roy DeCarava, Jack Delano, Pierre Dubreuil, Mary Beth Edelson, Lee Friedlander, Jaromír Funke, Miguel Gandert, Mario Giacomelli, Ralph Gibson, Gilbert & George, Laura Gilpin, Eunice Golden, Judith Golden, Emmet Gowin, Mark Markov Grinberg, Vadim Guschin, Betty Hahn, Robert Heinecken, Florence Henri, Paula Hocks, Bernard Shea Horne, Douglas Huebler, Boris Ignatovich, Gertrude Käsebier, Valentina Kalugina, Barbara Kasten, Yakov Khalip, Gustav Klutsis, Nikolai Kulebiaken, Ted Kuykendall, Dorothea Lange, Alexander Lavrentiev, Nicholai Lavrentiev, Michael Lebron, Jungjin Lee, Russell Lee, Danny Lyon, Joan Lyons, Dora Maar, Aleksandras Macijauskas, Gerard Malanga, Raul Martinez, Victor Masayesva Jr., Margarethe Mather, Ana Mendieta, Laurent Millet, Yevgenni Mokhorev, Wright Morris, Galina Moskaleva, Igor Mukhin, Celia Alvarez Muñoz, Joan Myers, Patrick Nagatani, Floris Michael Neusüss, Nicholas Nixon, Sergei Osmachkin, Eliot Porter, Arnulf Rainer, Susan Rankaitis, Edward Ranney, Robert Rauschenberg, Man Ray, Gerhard Richter, Holly Roberts, Alexander Rodchenko, Varvara Rodchenko, Werner Rode, Franz Roh, James Rosenquist, Michal Rovner, Meridel Rubenstein, Adrienne Salinger, August Sander, Lorna Simpson, Aaron Siskind, W. Eugene Smith, Frederick Sommer, Ralph Steiner, Varvara Stepanova, May Stevens, Alfred Stieglitz, Jim Stone, Paul Strand, Josef Sudek, Maurice Tabard, Val Telberg, Edmund Teske, Andrée Tracey, UMBO, Willard Van Dyke, Andy Warhol, Edward Weston, Jo Whaley, Clarence H. White, Minor White, Joel-Peter Witkin, and Georgii Zelma.
The book has 14 pages of front matter, including 4- and 2-page essays by the editors. Some 36 pages in the back contain the media and dimensions of each work, and a one-paragraph biography and bibliography for each artist written by students. The book is valuable as an overview of 20th century photography, and provides higher resolution for the photos than the exhibition's Web site. I would have liked to see more text giving a context for each work; for example, in the back matter someone could have mentioned that Witkin's "Las Meninas" relates to the Velasquez painting of the same name.
In my mind, the book's biggest problem is its title. I'm failing to see what "idea" has to do with the book or its contents. Is there any photography that does not deal with ideas in some way? And if "After Modernism" is part of the title, why does the vast majority of the book deal with "Early to Late Modernism"? Finally, what is modernism to the editors, anyway? They fail to define the term as they see it.
Despite the puzzle of the title, buy this book from Amazon.com!
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