Truth and Photography: Notes on Looking and Photographing

Pictures made by a lens are inextricably linked to the real world--the world the photographer not only sees but lives in and thinks about. The most ambitious photographs (in an earlier time one might confidently have said the greatest photographs) recognize that an understanding of the identities of things, and of their relationships, is as important as the harmonious combination of the shapes these things make when projected by a lens onto a flat surface. Starting from this premise, and in elegant and incisive prose, Jerry Thompson in Truth and Photography explores the many-leveled relationship between seeing and thinking. The book reproduces (in duotone) and the essays discuss some twenty photographs--some as well known as any the medium has produced, some more obscure, and some never before published. Mr. Thompson's discussions of pictures and picture-taking occasions are not strictly historical, nor are they concerned only with theoretical considerations. They do not rely exclusively on the author's thirty-year experience as a working photographer, nor are they confined to the medium of photography. Rather, Mr. Thompson employs multiple perspectives, usually in the same essay and often on a single picture. His examinations are penetrating, sustained, allusive, and frequently thrilling. They represent not settled explanations but living thought.

Author: Jerry L. Thomson
Publisher: Ivan R. Dee Publisher
Published: 09/10/2003
Pages: 172
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.06lbs
Size: 9.32h x 6.25w x 0.77d
ISBN: 9781566635394


Review Citation(s):
Library Journal 11/01/2003 pg. 80
Choice 05/01/2004 pg. 1656

About the Author
Jerry L. Thompson has been a working professional photographer since 1973. He studied at the University of Texas and at Yale, has held Guggenheim and NEA fellowships, and has been photographer in residence in the American Wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. His pictures may be found in the permanent collections of major American museums. His other books include The Last Years of Walker Evans and, with Susan M. Vogel, Closeup: Lessons in the Art of Seeing African Art. He lives in Amenia, New York.


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