CREATIVE PHOTOGRAPHY: Aesthetic Trends 1839 To Modern Times (1988)
Creative Photography: Aesthetic Trends 1839–1960 is a landmark book, first published in 1962, by photo historian Helmut Gernsheim. It is celebrated as the first comprehensive study to examine the medium of photography purely from an artistic and aesthetic viewpoint rather than a technical one.
“From its earliest years, photography's role in the arts has been the subject of lively debate. But it was not until 1962 that this ground-breaking book by a leading photographic historian brought to the controversy the first authoritative and comprehensive study undertaken from a primarily aesthetic point of view.
Spanning the history of the subject from the daguerreotype to modern photo-reportage, Creative Photography eloquently persuades us that photography is indeed an art.
At the heart of the study are over 240 superb examples of the photographer's art selected from Helmut Gernsheim's own extensive, far-ranging collection and printed on glossy stock. Among them are works by such master photographers as Julia Margaret Cameron, Jacob Riis, Edward Steichen, Alfred Stieglitz, André Kertész, Eugène Atget, Man Ray, Edward Weston, Erich Salomon, Cecil Beaton, Walker Evans and Henri Cartier-Bresson.
Helmut Gernsheim's clear, cogent exposition of aesthetic trends in photography reveals how each decade had its own way of presenting similar themes, It shows, too, how the increased sensitivity of photographic materials and improved equipment prompted an ever-widening range of subjects and opened new horizons for photographie creativity. Photography's fascinating relationship to contemporary painting is also probed extensively; Gernsheim demonstrates how photography's superior capacity to record eventually freed painters from traditional constraints, and photographers began to approach their subjects with a more painterly expressiveness.
Now available for the first time in an inexpensive paperback edition, this influential book is must reading for amateur and professional photographers, and students of history and the arts. The general reader as well will find in Creative Photography new ways to appreciate and enjoy the art of photography and to better understand its creative possibilities.”
Hard Cover, great condition