The Short Story of Photography

Film critic Smith turns his keen eye toward photography, crafting a concise history of the medium. Organized into four sections—genres, techniques, themes, and works—the bulk of the book considers 50 key works spanning the course of nearly 200 years, beginning with French inventor and photography pioneer Nicéphore Niépce’s 1826 heliograph View from the Window at Le Gras through to German photographer Andreas Gursky’s 2016 digitally manipulated photo of the inside of an Amazon warehouse. Each entry includes a short analysis of the photo with cross-references to other relevant parts of the book. Smith describes Eve Arnold’s 1961 photograph of Malcolm X as “no conventional portrait of a political figure, [and] yet it possesses a stateliness and conveys the gravitas of the man.” He then draws connections to its genres (portrait, society), themes (iconography, politics, power), and technique (gelatin silver prints). Though the book is most useful as an introduction to the subject of photography, its clever composition packs enough detail to cater to a range of readers from lay readers to photo enthusiasts. (May)