“All pictures do cultural work and can allow insight into the concerns of their makers and viewers. Through their makers’ aesthetic choices, photographs indicate not only that they are ‘good pictures’ but that they are good pictures according to the rules of a specific time and place. Photographs reveal their allegiance to particular social groups through the formal decisions they exhibit...” — Kim Beil
In his influential history and guidebook from the 1970s, The Keepers of Light, author William Crawford begins his text by defining photographic syntax. If syntax is the rules of language that help give it shape and create meaning — the rules of sentence and paragraph structure — then photographic syntax, Crawford argues, is developed by the technologies and processes that we use to create pictures, the essential parameters of visual meaning.
Most histories of photography focus on the work of individual photographers and the fine art of the medium. When they address technology, it is mostly to discuss the major changes that caused seismic shifts, like the development of wet plate or the Kodak Brownie. The bulk of the field, however, is much more commercial and pedestrian than these histories reflect. The new book by Kim Beil, an art historian at Stanford University, Good Pictures: A History of Popular Photography, addresses the popular development of photography, and traces the technological advancement of the medium through its commercialized discourse. She emphasizes the much more common uses of the medium, and thus the development of more vernacular uses of photography. In doing so, she shows the subtle and remarkable evolution of the medium since its inception, and provides an insight attuned to Crawford’s discussion on photographic syntax, looking at how photographic technologies, codes, and styles have developed with the advancement of the medium.
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Beil’s book is divided into six sections, each representing decades of photographic history, and these sections are further divided into short chapters. The topics detailed include technical innovations and trends that took hold during the times outlined in the sections. Such topics include the tools required for a daguerreotype portrait studio, the development of magnesium flash, soft-focus, the Rembrandt effect, ruin porn, drone photography, and the prevalence of digital filters today. Each of the chapters can be read independently, as an essay describing the particular innovation or trend discussed — the book even includes prompts encouraging the reader to jump between related chapters, rather than reading it from beginning to end — but, collectively, they offer a greater understanding of the popular development of amateur and commercial photography from the beginning of the medium to the present day.
There are parts of Beil’s history that are well researched and documented elsewhere (the popularity of gum printing and pictorialist photography, for instance) but nevertheless, she discusses photographic innovations and trends I knew little about (the story of Jacob Riis burning down a building with flash powder, for example. I knew little about the development of magnesium flash). There are other topics, too, that she discusses from a new perspective; the chapters on modernist composition show how photographers like Weston and Maholy-Nagy influenced popular and amateur photography texts and trends.
There are parts of Beil’s history that are well researched and documented elsewhere (the popularity of gum printing and pictorialist photography, for instance) but nevertheless, she discusses photographic innovations and trends I knew little about (the story of Jacob Riis burning down a building with flash powder, for example. I knew little about the development of magnesium flash). There are other topics, too, that she discusses from a new perspective; the chapters on modernist composition show how photographers like Weston and Maholy-Nagy influenced popular and amateur photography texts and trends.
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Beil’s research comes from unlikely sources. Histories of photography typically document important collections, but Beil instead quotes popular magazines and how-to books. Looking at her sources for reproductions also reveals a great deal about her intentions and perspective; she includes pictures from books marketed toward “weekend” photographers produced by Kodak, Instagram accounts, Gourmet magazine, Magnum Photo, Hollywood headshots, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Popular Photography. Together, these point to a broader and more pedestrian history — and thus perhaps more accessible and democratic — than those that have created and defined the photographic canon.
I’ve been teaching photography since 1999, and have seen many trends come and go (cross-processing and HDR were especially popular) and some that never seem to go out of fashion (ruin porn, specifically dilapidated barns). The collective study of these techniques and trends, however, reveal how photography took root and became the all-pervasive medium we know today. Perhaps more importantly, thinking back to Crawford’s idea about photographic syntax, in reading Beil’s book we can see how technologies and fashion evolved into new vocabularies and help create and influence how we make meaning for visual and photographic experiences.
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I’ve been teaching photography since 1999, and have seen many trends come and go (cross-processing and HDR were especially popular) and some that never seem to go out of fashion (ruin porn, specifically dilapidated barns). The collective study of these techniques and trends, however, reveal how photography took root and became the all-pervasive medium we know today. Perhaps more importantly, thinking back to Crawford’s idea about photographic syntax, in reading Beil’s book we can see how technologies and fashion evolved into new vocabularies and help create and influence how we make meaning for visual and photographic experiences.
Purchase Book
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