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Preface to Light
Readings: A Photography Critic's Writings, 1968-1978
by A. D. Coleman
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In the spring
of 1968 I became a full-time freelance writer specializing
in photography criticism.
I began writing about photography because I was excited
by photographs, curious about the medium, and fascinated
-- even frightened -- by its impact on our culture.
I still feel that way.
My first pieces appeared in the Village Voice,
in a regular column called "Latent Image."
Between 1968 and 1974, my primary forums were the
Voice, Popular Photography, and the
Arts and Leisure Section of the Sunday New York
Times; I was a regular columnist for all three
simultaneously. Since 1974, I have written for a diverse
group of periodicals, with Camera 35 my most
frequent outlet. During this decade I wrote well over
four hundred articles on various critical, historical,
educational, and cultural aspects of photography.
That volume astonishes me now; I do not think I could
match it again.
The quantity of that output had much to do with the
specific nature of my involvement with photography
as I initially conceived and undertook it. I intended
my work to be an interconnected running commentary
on photographs and photography itself -- a form of
journalism, in the diaristic sense of the word,
as well as a critical interaction with the medium.
When I started, photography was entering that state
of evolution and redefinition which in the past few
years has brought it increased critical attention
and a much-widened audience. Though I prophesied that
eventuality, and proselytized for it, I think I never
really expected it to happen. While I have my reservations
about many of the side effects, I'm glad that it came
about; I believe the attention -- and the audience
-- will be rewarded.
So much seemed to be happening in photography at that
point, and my knowledge of and background in the medium
were so scant, that I did not presume to function
as an authority or an arbiter of taste. Those roles
don't attract me; and my youth, inexperience, and
lack of an overview made them impossible in any case.
What I hoped to do was to exemplify the possibility
of engaging on a personal level, emotionally and intellectually,
with a wide range of photographic imagery in an articulate
and meaningful fashion, thereby provoking others to
do the same.
Because so much was going on, and so few were writing
about it, I was leery of functioning as an intentional
filter -- that is, I was reluctant to exclude from
my consideration anything that seemed even remotely
pertinent. I wanted my function to be that of a synapse
in the medium: a message center, a bridge between
the origin of communication and its destination. So
I embraced and tried to deal with almost everything
that came my way or could be ferreted out, let it
all pass through me and, as best I could, turned the
experience into words. For a while it was possible
to maintain at least the illusion that I was ingesting
almost everything there was (on the East Coast, at
any rate); but by the early 1970s that had become
patently impossible, and my understanding of my task
began to change. By late 1974 I had virtually ceased
writing about exhibits and monographs. Partly that
was due to the sudden lack of access to effective
forums for such discussions, partly to shifts in my
own attitudes.
This book is an attempt to reconstruct this evolution,
in public, of a critical overview and vocabulary pertaining
to the medium of photography. It is also a quite personal
and surely idiosyncratic account of a crucial period
in the medium's growth, somewhat limited by its geographical
fix on New York but still more extensive an eyewitness
chronicle than anything else of which I'm aware. And
it is a collection of my favorite essays, judged from
my standpoint as a writer.
Except for minor corrections and alterations, I have
not rewritten these pieces; rewriting would have made
this a different kind of book. The early pieces, by
and large, are quick and tentative responses to the
works with which they engage. But I see them now as
necessary steps in the ongoing critical process of
coming to terms with individual bodies of work as
they evolve, take shape, and are nurtured by their
makers. That, in part, was the point of them originally,
and is certainly part of my purpose in including them
here. From an autobiographical standpoint, I wanted
to indicate something of my own fallibility and naivete,
and to suggest by example that critical ideas can
be thought of as exploratory and mutable -- sometimes
drastically so, as can be seen for example in my writings
about Paul Strand. The pieces dating from 1973 through
1978 are generally more considered essays.
The book focuses on the work of younger, less-established
photographers; that was the emphasis in the total
body of writing from which these pieces have been
selected. The few essays about better-known photographers
that appear were included either because I felt the
piece was a reconsideration which departed markedly
from the established critical consensus, or because
I felt the subjects hadn't received the attention
their contributions merited.
Even within those parameters, however, there are glaring
omissions -- dozens of less-established and/or younger
photographers whose names should appear in any comprehensive
survey of the past quarter-century's activity in photography.
But this book is not intended to be such a survey.
Many people whose work I find highly important are
herein referred to only in passing, if at all -- sometimes
because my writing about them did not do justice to
their work, or was otherwise ephemeral; sometimes
because the occasion for writing about their work
did not arise. Such absences therefore should not
be taken as value judgments. Those represented here
are only the tip of the iceberg.
Finally, I would like to note several professional
stances which I feel have had distinct shaping effects
upon my work. One was the decision to be and to remain
a freelance writer, a status I retained even as a
weekly contributor to the Village Voice and
a bi-weekly contributor to the New York Times.
This choice was made in order to leave myself ultimately
accountable to no editorial policies save my own.
I have never regretted it.
The other was the early decision to write only about
publicly presented work: books, magazines, exhibitions,
and other events which were open to everyone. I have
not gone into the studio to examine work to which
readers do not have access, nor have I asked image-makers
to explain their creations to me and reported those
explanations as if they were my own. Nor have I written
about work which my readers cannot experience for
themselves. I consider such writing to be a form of
speculative fiction. In such cases, the danger is
run of the criticism supplanting the work. I have
always kept in mind as an operating principle that
the work is primary and the criticism secondary, regardless
of the relative quality of the two. The main functlon
of criticism, I believe, should be to provoke other
personal dialogues with the primary works.
Yet, having said all that, I must also say that I
have my own biases and predilections, as I'm sure
will be apparent. A good question for members of any
audience to keep in mind is "What's being filtered
out?" That question should always be asked when
dealing with any form of human communication that's
reached the andience through one or more intermediaries.
An audience is entitled -- and expected -- to form
its own opinions.
I hope this book will be of some interest and use
to the general public, to students of photography
and of contemporary communicative/creatlve media,
and to photographers. If the general public can learn
from this book something about what's behind the current
ferment in the medium, and be encouraged to engage
with it more actively as an andience; if students
(and teachers) can find it effective in generating
a more articulate responsiveness to the full diversity
of photographic imagery; and if photographers of all
stripes can encounter herein at least some of their
attitudes, ideas, concerns, and intentions enunciated
in ways with which they would not entirely disagree
-- I'll be more than happy.
In concluding, I wish to give credit to four people
whose writings about imagery, about photography, and
about communicative media were highly influential
on my own, particularly at the outset: William N.
Ivins, Marshall McLuhan, Minor White, and Ralph Hattersley.
Had I not encountered their work, I might never have
started all this.
-- A. D. Coleman
Staten Island, New York
July 1978
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From Light Readings: A Photography
Critic's Writings, 1968-1978 (New York: Oxford University
Press,1979; second edition, revised and expanded, Albuquerque:
University of New Mexico Press, 1998).
Copyright
© 1979 by A. D. Coleman. All rights reserved. For
reprint permissions contact Image/World Syndication
Services, POB 040078, Staten Island, NY 10304-0002 USA;T/F
(718) 447-3091, imageworld@nearbycafe.com
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