Why Photography Matters

This concise and confident text argues on behalf of photography as a medium for creating a dialectic between the self and the world. Thompson (Truth and Photography), who is a writer and photographer, constructs his argument out of both his experience creating images and the Western literary tradition. He favors a style of photography that he considers more robust than the style in which the medium is commonly used and described by contemporary artists and thinkers. He sees the best photography as an exploration of logic, championing the material experience of returning to a subject matter again and again throughout time, over subjects merely entangled in personality and celebrity. Thompson's argument is often insightful and convincing to a degree, although his choice to dismiss so much modern thinking and artwork in a field as broad and broadly important as photography stunts the text. For example, he gets so caught up in an argument with a Susan Sontag straw woman that he distracts from the central argument. Despite the stuffy tone, Thompson manages to hit some important points, and his enthusiasm for the simple act of taking a photo is catching. 7 black and white illus. (Sept.)