Book Review: Looking at Photography
Woman with Black Sand, 1976 © Jo Ann Callis
Steven Frailey’s new book, Looking At Photography, is an anthology featuring 100 of the most influential photographers and selections of their work. He accompanies each with a small page of text, full of thoughts on both the photographer and their influence. John Szarkowski, the esteemed director of photography at the Museum of Modern Art, published a book titled Looking at Photographs: 100 Pictures from the Collection of the Museum of Modern Art in 1973. Frailey, inspired by this project, picked up where Szarkowski left off, featuring works from the early 80s to present day.
Pink Powder, Lily Donaldson wearing John Galliano, 2008 © Nick Knight
This format allows for an exciting collection. Individual photo books often feature photographers of similar aesthetics, but Looking at Photography offers a stylistic shift on each page. “Photography is a nimble medium,” writes Frailey in the book’s introduction. “All one hundred included in this volume have expanded the definition of the medium, and these photographer’s work have influenced the conversation in significant ways.” Each photographer gets a few paragraphs of text, followed by one or two of their pictures, resting on glossy white pages. Frailey covers photographers from all corners of the art world.
Alex (Giant Explosion), 2010 © Ryan McGinley
On Annie Leibovitz, he explains the collaborative relationship between magazines and photography, showing her portrait of Hugh Dancy, Karen Elson, and Michael Shannon for Vogue US in 2013. He details photography’s relationship with linguistics and text when speaking about Catherine Opie’s Dyke. In a few paragraphs about indulgence, consumer culture, and the emergence of Camp aesthetics, Frailey summarizes the whimsical impacts of David La Chapelle’s Astroworld Diptych. The following page changes direction, featuring one of Dawoud Bey’s somber landscape images shot from different locations along the Underground Railroad.
John in Sixteen Parts, 1996 © Gary Schneider
The last photographer to be featured in Frailey’s book is Zoe Leonard, a critically-acclaimed artist who has been working since the 1980’s. He shows a series of photos from Analogue Portfolio which has upwards of 400 square images of storefronts in the Lower East Side prior to rapid gentrification in the later portion of the century. They are shown in grids, each square revealing the individual character of each business from the sidewalk. On this series, Frailey writes, “The work is not an act of nostalgia, but of memorial and resilience, both ideological and introspective, or how we as individuals attempt an imprint, a brief recognition, and then vanish.”
Dyke, 1993 © Catherine Opie
Frailey, by honoring the champions of photography, is refusing to let the recognition of important photographers vanish. Through his selection of artists for this photo book, Frailey allows for more than a brief recognition of their work. Creators of the past and present have contributed to photography and artistic expression, as well as conversations regarding prejudice and discrimination amongst communities placed on the margins. In his gratitude, Frailey thanks all of the artists who shared their work, “especially those who gave without pause through friendship and trust.” Through his network of remarkable artists, Frailey has created an anthology of modern photography that quickly earns its place beside Szarkowski’s original.
You can find more of Frailey’s work here. You can also purchased signed copies of the book here.
