Category: aesthetics

Photographs and family

Photographs have some effect on “family,” but I seriously doubt whether they actually consolidate or construct it.  The idea comes first, I think, and the photographs shore it up. Whatever elusive idea actually ties...

Is Digital Photography?

Betulanimbusi, reproduced here, is one image from the elegant new catalogue of Deborah Baker’s photographs, In Paradiso.  Her exhibition opened in London on Thursday, September 4, at the William Morris Museum.  The catalogue includes my...

A “good” photograph

Is it “good”? Technically, it’s OK–comprehensible, decent colour, decent resolution.  The family doesn’t look hysterically happy; everyone seems a little introspective by  contemporary standards.. But it’s from 1947–probably the shot for the Christmas card. Another possible...

Walead Beshty

I’ve just done a review for Source–very short–of a catalogue of Beshty’s work called Natural Histories, a collaboration between a museum in Malmo, Sweden, and another in Madrid.  I didn’t have enough space to...