How You Look At It: Photographs of the 20th Century - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1891024213 ISBN 13: 9781891024214

Publisher: Distributed Art Publishers, 2000

Synopsis

Contributions by Thomas Weski. Text by Heinz Liesbrock.

About this title

Review

How You Look at It is the catalog of a major photographic exhibition organized by the Sprengel Museum in Hanover, Germany. Its thesis--that photography is the defining art of the 20th century--is straightforward, but its organization is unusual. Rather than a chronological survey of iconic images, the book presents only 40 photographers, from the pioneering Frenchman Atget to postwar Americans and modern German masters like Thomas Struth and Andreas Gursky. This enables the chosen artists to be shown in depth, though the criteria for their being chosen are not clear to this reviewer. Exposure to European material will benefit the American audience to whom this English-language edition of the book is directed, but it is unfortunate that, apart from Tomatsu Shomei, no non-Western photographer is included. Just as it took Robert Frank, a Swiss, to shock the art establishment in 1959 with the raw images of his collection The Americans, Americans today can learn from the formal explorations of their transatlantic counterparts. Examples of non-photographic artworks are sprinkled through the book--a Picasso portrait, for example, or a David Hockney cityscape--giving context to the photographs. The thoughtful text consists of essays by the two curators of the show and three other critics who analyze the current theoretical underpinnings of photography. This is not easy reading; the translations successfully preserve the denseness of the original German. The 500 images, however, speak for themselves, making How You Look at It valuable material for anyone interested in photography and its relations to contemporary cultural issues. --John Stevenson

Review

...highlights many of the big guns of photography-Walker Evans, William Eggleston and Eugene Atget-in a refreshingly different way. -- Playboy, December 2000

A panoramic view of 20th century photography presenting entire bodies of work that are arranged thematically rather than chronologically. -- DKNY, Fall 2000

Beyond the organizational trope, this coffee-table book with substance also serves quite nicely as a collection of really great pictures. -- The San Francisco Bay Guardian, December 2000

For Snap-Happy People. A photography-fan’s must-have. -- Andy Warhol’s Interview, December 2000

The best part: Instead of boiling an artist down to one image [it] gives us a sampling from each photographer. -- Jane Magazine, October 2000, Lesley Meyer

The...essays...discuss the technical, historical, and social backgrounds of...photography as well as...ties to more traditional painting and sculpture. -Ingrid Eberly -- Nylon, October 2000

... exposes unexpected connections and threads in what is arguably one of the definitive art forms of the last century. -- IKEA space Magazine, September 2000

...a smartly conceived ramble over the lenscape of 20th-century photography. -- W Magazine, December 2000

...an intelligent survey of the history of the photographic medium and its uses and variations during its relatively young life. -- DoubleTake, Winter 2001

“How you look at it” effortlessly spans the century, reaching a crescendo with its final image... -- Flaunt, October 2000

About this edition

• Publisher: Distributed Art Publishers
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 1891024213
• ISBN 13: 9781891024214
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 544
• Editor: Heinz Liesbrock, Thomas Weski