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Fine Art Photo Books For The Twenty-First Century
By Dominic Donaldson Fine Art Photo Books For The Twenty-First Century
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They say that a picture can speak a thousand words, and that is fervently what most photographers and artists believe in. There are many coffee tables adorned with photo books featuring the lives of unsung heroes and over exposed celebrities. People use these images to connect with others, and try to grasp an essence of what life is like outside of their own pastures green. The power of photo books to convey an emotion is infinite, and each person will inevitably read their own message into an image, no matter how iconic.
The art world in the sixties was famed for a plethora of photographic geniuses, from Lee Miller to Nan Goldin, and of course, Andy Warhol. These artists may not have been the creme de la creme of the photography world per se, but their images were powerful, and heralded a new era for photography and coffee table photo books.
Content and context was preferred over aesthetics, or rather the technicalities of photography. Happy accidents were welcomed, and for the first time, documentary photography gained an appeal as a work of art. May of the subjects were shot in what would ordinarily be private environments, so rather than contrived studio shots, these images appeared gritty and held an essence of the real, sublime, and were considered candid.
More recently, the work of Richard Billingham has given a new angle to photography in the often elitist art world. His depictions of his mother and father, living in a rundown council flat include images of drunken arguments, fighting, and show a world where Armani and Prada do not feature. In contrast to the hard edged celebrity photos of the sixties, that although were seedy, rang clear with fame, money and a privileged lifestyle, Billingham's photography tells a seedy story of everyday life for the lower classes.
Even contrasted to the work of Goldin, whose subjects were mostly socially rejected artists living on the edge of life, death and fame, Billingham opens a window that most people would rather not look through. However, these pictures have bought intrigue to the art world, maybe because their lifestyles are a million miles away from such poverty stricken urban survival. It is almost as if his pictures have the potential to become photo books on the coffee tables of the world's richest.
Just as people rush to buy celebrity photo books through pure intrigue, to try and understand a fairytale world they can never know; the art elite have found the pictures by Billigham just as compelling, a way to try and connect with a world they do not know, but for different reasons entirely.
About the author
Dom Donaldson is a photographic expert.
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