Photographic Memory: The Album in the Age of Photography

As photography became an increasingly accessible medium in the twentieth century, the popularity of the photographic album exploded, yielding a wonderful range of objects made for varying purposes--to memorialize, document (officially or unofficially), promote, or educate and sometimes simply to channel creative energy. Photographic Memory: The Album in the Age of Photography traces the rise of the album from the turn of last century to the present day, showcasing some of the most important examples in the history of the medium, as collected by the Library of Congress. The book includes albums by acclaimed photographers and filmmakers, among them Walker Evans, Danny Lyon, Holland Day, Jim Goldberg, Dorothea Lange, Duane Michals, Leni Riefenstahl and W. Eugene Smith, as well as lesser-known but equally significant albums. Each album is beautifully reproduced over numerous spreads with an accompanying detailed explanatory text. An insightful history of the album format, as well as an informative essay about caring for and restoring albums are included. At a time when the physical collection of photographs is becoming increasingly immaterial through the ascent of digital publishing, and at a time in which radical shifts have occurred in the status of handmade artists' objects, Photographic Memory is a comprehensive illustrated history of a form of presentation that became something of an art in itself.

Author: Verna Posever Curtis
Publisher: Aperture
Published: 05/31/2011
Pages: 288
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 4.75lbs
Size: 11.80h x 9.80w x 1.20d
ISBN: 9781597111317


Review Citation(s):
New York Times Book Review 08/21/2011 pg. 26
Choice 11/01/2012

About the Author
Curtis, Verna Posever: - Verna Posever Curtis is a curator of photography in the Prints & Photographs Division of the Library of Congress. She has written and lectured extensively on 19th and 20th century photography, and penned the volumes Ambassadors of Progress: American Women Photographers in Paris, 1900-1901 and F. Holland Day: Selected Texts and Bibliography, among others.