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Bog standard
This title was published to accompany the eponymous exhibition of PH Emerson's work at the National Museum of Photography, Film & Television which, in untimely manner, has just closed. The exhibition, that is, not the Museum. Although a change of title to National Museum of Media makes one wonder. The rebranding has obviously been a great success as a quick google of the new name brought up a staggering 15 hits. Back to the book. If you tired long ago of the debate surrounding photography as art then you can blame PH Emerson for your ennui, at least in part. His Naturalistic Photography for Students of the Art (1889) was one of the cats scattering the photographic pigeons in Victorian times. This new book provides an overview of Emerson and his contribution in words, deeds and pictures to the advancement of the art/craft/science/whatever, being in part a series of essays by John Taylor providing historical and aesthetic context for the work of Emerson and his peers, and the photography movements of the time. The second half presents a comprehensive collection from eight bodies of work made over a 10-year period in East Anglia, either side of publication of that seminal book, and a catalogue of works. Emerson is credited with inventing differential focus, or rather the application of selective depth of field to mimic the way the eye surveys a scene, and thereby creating 'naturalistic' photography. He was an active publisher of illustrated books and albums, and his development of the mechanical photogravure process was to impact on the work of later masters of the medium, including Alvin Langdon Coburn and Alfred Stieglitz. The book is therefore not only a rounded record of the achievement of one of photography's earlier leading lights, but his impact on its practice at the time and on that of generations to follow.
The Old Order and The New: PH Emerson and Photography, 1885-1895, by John Taylor, is published by Prestel at £40, ISBN 3-7913-3699-1.
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