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Why I stopped writing about photography from Ag33 |
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During the earliest of those 17 years, photography was still a neglected area of study rich in potential discoveries. In 1978 an assiduous student could still have read a large proportion of the entire corpus of important literature in English written about photography since its announcement in 1839. I know this was possible because I did it. During this time I amassed an impressive library of over 5000 books and exhibition catalogues and an equivalent number of photography magazines and supplements, mostly purchased inexpensively in second-hand shops. Information and knowledge was stuffed into my head to feed a rapidly developing addiction. I spent three years in the British Library researching a 19th century French photographer you still won’t have heard of, and was for a number of unsatisfactory years a tutor in photography at the Royal College of Art. What was cosily referred to as ‘The Photography World’ comprised a small number of devotees who more or less shared out the spoils among themselves. All the usual pitfalls of the self-perpetuating, self-aggrandising coterie were applicable; they wrote favourably about one another’s (usually atrocious and now completely forgotten) books and exhibitions; it was riddled with grotesque political correctness and lefty politics of the most simplistic, asinine kind; amateurism was rampant. And the same few people and institutions monopolised the little public funding available to the medium. Plus ça change… Why did I move on? For many reasons, not least of which was that I’d been made the salaried editor of an art magazine which no longer required me to freelance. I had, in fact, started writing about photography entirely disingenuously and as a calculated career move. Straight out of university and asked by the editor of an art magazine what I would most like to write about I replied instantly ‘Photography’. A prior, cursory flick through his parish organ had told me he didn’t have anyone writing about this increasingly discussed subject and I calculated, correctly, that he was more likely to accept an idea unrelated to painting or sculpture, which every greenhorn critic wanted to write about. My knowledge of photography was less than rudimentary. Had the editor quizzed me even superficially I would have been yorked middle stump first ball. I had flicked through Art and Photography by Aaron Scharf, a copy of which I had failed to return to a lax library, and I had seen very recently an exhibition at Agnew’s of eye-opening, beautifully toned still lives by Roger Fenton - but that was it. Spurred on by fear of having my ignorance exposed I worked assiduously until within a couple of years I knew sufficient to bowl out other charlatans attracted to the same patch. Next Page >> |
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