Why Photographs? (a book without photographs) (Paperback)

“A delightfully eclectic collection that urges readers to look beyond the lens.” —Kirkus Reviews

Timely and essential, Why Photographs? is meant for anyone interested in discovering how to really look at a photograph. According to Neil Selkirk’s book, almost since the beginning, most of us have had it all wrong. Insofar as art is the pursuit of human self-knowledge, then photography, from its invention, should have been recognized as a direct route to enlightenment. Beginning with the fact that painters start with a blank canvas and photographers start with a full one, the two media have never had anything meaningful in common.

The photograph’s delight in riveting detail, spontaneity, evident credibility, and its embrace of chance—radical new characteristics immediately recognized by its inventors—were promptly pounced on and denounced as unartistic by an establishment that correctly recognized photography as an existential threat to painting. That establishment’s failed attempts over the next one hundred and fifty years to belittle the legitimacy of the new medium did however succeed in confusing and muddying the process of looking.

Why Photographs? is a defense of straight photography, offered at a moment when the photograph as a simple, credible document is facing obsolescence. Since the earliest days, independent minds have seen through the smokescreen to the pictures themselves: the essays, poems, and one-liners gathered here are nothing less than a celebration of the rewards of simply looking. Why Photographs? illuminates those long-camouflaged secrets, which are in fact photography’s unique gift to us all.

NEIL SELKIRK was born in London in 1947 and arrived in New York in 1968 with a Leica and a European apprentice’s craft skills. He embraced everything the city threw at him. During his trip, Lyndon Johnson withdrew from the presidency, Martin Luther King Jr. was shot, Newark exploded in riot and flames, and Bobby Kennedy announced his presidential bid. Selkirk decided to stay.

As a passionate documentarian with an immigrant’s discerning eye for the anomalies of his adopted land, his photographs quickly drew assignments from all major U.S. magazines including Esquire, New York Times Magazine, Interview, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, Vogue and the premier issues of Wired, Paper, Colors, and Spy.

In 1968, Selkirk had a life-changing encounter with a photograph while working for Richard Avedon in London. Two years later he discovered that Diane Arbus had taken the picture and shortly thereafter, he met her. After her death in 1971, he found himself immersed for the next forty years in printing her work. The experience drove him away from the commercially driven embellishment of the subject back toward the simple integrity of the image as document. He is the only person ever authorized to make posthumous prints of the photographs of Diane Arbus.

Selkirk’s books include See No Evil, 1000 on 42nd Street, Lobbyists, and Certain Women, as well the ongoing photographic projects, Security Matters and Out of Darkness. All explore photography’s capacity to reveal that which—although indisputably there—would otherwise remain unseen.

Selkirk lives and works in New York City and the Hudson Valley.

Neil Selkirk was born in London in 1947 and arrived in New York in 1968 with a Leica and a European apprentice's craft skills. He embraced everything the city threw at him. During his trip, Lyndon Johnson withdrew from the presidency, Martin Luther King Jr. was shot, Newark exploded in riot and flames, and Bobby Kennedy announced his presidential bid. Selkirk decided to stay. As a passionate documentarian with an immigrant's discerning eye for the anomalies of his adopted land, his photographs quickly drew assignments from all major U.S. magazines including Esquire, New York Times Magazine, Interview, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, Vogue and the premier issues of Wired, Paper, Colors, and Spy. In 1968, Selkirk had a life-changing encounter with a photograph while working for Richard Avedon in London. Two years later he discovered that Diane Arbus had taken the picture and shortly thereafter, he met her. After her death in 1971, he found himself immersed for the next forty years in printing her work. The experience drove him away from the commercially driven embellishment of the subject back toward the simple integrity of the image as document. He is the only person ever authorized to make posthumous prints of the photographs of Diane Arbus. Selkirk's books include See No Evil, 1000 on 42nd Street, Lobbyists, and Certain Women, as well the ongoing photographic projects, Security Matters and Out of Darkness. All explore photography's capacity to reveal that which-although indisputably there-would otherwise remain unseen. Selkirk lives and works in New York City and the Hudson Valley.