Customer Reviews
Through the lens with print - By: Robin Benson, 04 Mar 2005 
This book (and the next volume) will surely become the standard reference for anyone wanting to know about 'photobooks' & in creating a new word for photographs in a book perhaps this will create a new publishing genre too. The author's rightly point out that photography is a printed-page medium & the four hundred & fifty titles examined, with just over two hundred in this first book, probably represent the best (or most interesting) titles ever published.
The nine chapters give a lucid in depth review of photobooks to the 1970s with Anna Atkins 1843 'Photographs of British Algae' taking the first photobook prize. I particularly enjoyed chapter six, Medium & Message: the photobook as propaganda, basicallly dealing with Soviet books in the Thirties & the examples shown are quite extraordinary in their use of images & design. Reproducing the pages from these books would easily make a separate title. The other fascinating chapter was nine, dealing with postwar Japanese books, again the reproduced jackets & spreads show amazing creativity & vision, not only in the choice of photos but also in the use of printing & binding techniques.
Stunning though this book is I thought there was one particular weakness, in so many of the books there are not enough pages shown. Many of them have two pages, for instance 'An American Exodus' by Lange & Taylor, there are fifteen spreads so it is possible to follow the flow of images or Avery Brodovitch's 'Balllet' with eighteen spreads to capture the feel of the subject. Most of the titles though are two or three to a spread alllowing mostly a cover plus four or six pages from inside the book but annoyingly there is easily room for more pages had there been a slight adjustment to the book detail text that accompanies each photobook. The excess white space reallly should have been put to better use. Despite this the paper & printing of the book is first class, the images are reproduced in a fine screen as cut-outs with a drop shadow & run of varnish to reallly make them sparkle.
Parr & Badger have almost created a unique book but Andrew Roth's 'The book of 101 books: Seminal photographic books of the twentieth century' (ISBN 0967077443) published in 2001 must be regarded as the first attempt to capture the essence of photobooks & in both titles the editorial concept is the same, reproduce the covers & pages rather than show individual photographs. As a designer this makes both books come alive for me but I prefer 'The Photobook' for its exhilarating coverage in both words & images.
