Book Reviews & Notes

Final Major Project Posts
  • Photography and War – Pippa Oldfield October 31, 2019
    Reaktion books have an excellent series on photographic issues and theme, Exposures. A recent edition is by Pippa Oldfield, on Photography and War. The book is ...
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  • Place and Placelessness August 18, 2019
    As I have been finalising the book edit, I have increasingly been drawn to maps to help tell the story – both the Khmer Rouge ...
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  • Bending the Frame – Fred Ritchen August 14, 2019
    Notes from Ritchin’s 2013 book: Chapter 1: The Useful Photograph Sets stage for profusion of images, loss of professional monopoly, power of tech and the web. Citizen journalists ...
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  • Let Us Now Praise Words August 13, 2019
    During the Depression, Fortune sent writer James Agee and photographer Walker Evans document the lives of cotton sharecroppers in Alabama. It was meant to be ...
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  • Stereotypes and Navajo August 9, 2019
    Photography’s Other Histories, edited by Christopher Pinney and Nicolas Peterson, is a well-researched work covering a lot of ground on two broad issues – the ...
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  • Ethics of Photography – Participation August 8, 2019
    Ethics has two broad modes of definition – personal and organisational. In everyday use, the word ‘ethics’ gets used in many different ways. For example, sometimes ...
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  • Without Honor – Arnold J Isaacs August 2, 2019
    The U.S. intervention was a military, political strategic, and moral catastrophe for which only Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, not the acts of ...
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  • A Sense of Place July 13, 2019
    I have been reading James Tyner’s book, The Killing of Cambodia: Geography, Genocide and the Unmasking of Space. It is well established that in defining Year Zero, ...
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  • James Tyner – The Killing of Cambodia – Notes July 12, 2019
    Book Notes Chapter 1: Imaging Genocide Can we define Genocide? Mick Q: Am I structuralist or post-structuralist? Mick Q: Role of power/knowledge nexus in ethical framework ‘Given that knowledge is ...
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  • Jae Emerling – Archives and Time July 1, 2019
    At Gary’s recommendation, I have been reading Jae Emerling, particularly on time and archives, as being highly appropriate for my FMP. Whilst I find Emerling’s style ...
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  • Notes on Paul Martin Lester’s ‘Visual Ethics’ June 9, 2019
    Preface Lester considers six philosophical ethics ideas as a way to ‘judge’ photography: Categorical imperative – Kant, role-based rules Utilitarianism – useful to the many Golden Mean – Aristotle, ...
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  • Looking is Necessary June 4, 2019
    Gian Butturini (1935-2006) was an Italian graphic designer who travelled to London most likely in 1969. He took photographs of what was happening in the ...
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Informing Contexts Posts
  • Afterwards April 16, 2019
    I thought that I had posted about Afterwards before, but somehow it got missed. It was one of the first books that I bought, early ...
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  • Setting Sun – Quotes – Part Two April 7, 2019
    MEDIA Introduction ‘In postwar Japan, the photograph in its truest form is widely understood to be a reproduction imprint. It might almost be said that the fine-art ...
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  • Setting Sun – Quotes – Part One April 7, 2019
    Quotes and notes: INTRODUCTION Anne Wilkes Tucker Daido Moriyama states that photography is ‘ .. not a social business, but personal work’. (pg 18) Tucker comments: ‘There is no separation ...
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  • Photographing the Holocaust – Janina Struk February 16, 2019
    I have just finished Janina Struk’s Photographing The Holocaust. Michelle Caswell’s Archiving the Unspeakable was ‘book of the year’ for me last year, Struk’s might ...
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  • A Question of Authenticity February 6, 2019
    In Camera Lucida, Roland Barthes states that ‘From a phenomenological viewpoint, in the photograph, the power of authentication exceeds the power of representation‘. (Camera Lucida: pg 89) In ...
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  • Walter Benjamin – The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction February 3, 2019
    Walter Benjamin’s work is refreshing, in his attempt to deal with photography as a unique medium, rather than transpose the traditions of painting and sculpture ...
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  • A Book Brief January 18, 2019
    In 2019, I plan to publish a book in Cambodia, about Sarath and family’s ‘Unfinished Stories’. Printing capability is competent but not sophisticated in the ...
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  • The Photographic Message – Roland Barthes January 16, 2019
    I wrote about Camera Lucida at the beginning of the MA. As I concluded then, I found it rather depressing. The Photographic Message, an essay in Image ...
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  • Dorothea Lange December 19, 2018
    A while back I was asked to make a short presentation to the PhotoBath group on an image that has always inspired me (September, 2016). It ...
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Positions & Practice Posts
Surfaces & Strategies Posts
Sustainable Prospects Posts