The Oxford companion to the photograph
by Tom Ruffles
[ bookreviews ]
Given photography's long and complex history, it might seem foolhardy to try to compress it into a single volume, albeit one of almost 800 pages and weighing nearly three kilos. But Robin Lenman and his contributors have done a sterling job and even in an age when internet information is a few clicks away, this book - originally published in 2005 and now reissued as a very reasonably priced paperback - will provide a useful and reliable reference. Its 1,600 or so entries divide into six themes: national and regional topics; areas of photographic practice; institutional and social aspects; movements and styles; invention and early history; and technical issues, other than early processes. The whole is printed on good quality paper that shows the illustrations off to best advantage.
Technical information, ranging across photography's history, is excellent and well presented, with what are often difficult concepts made as easily digestible as possible for the general reader. The digital material is particularly useful to have in a single volume, though this is probably where the book will date fastest. Also worthwhile are the articles that deal with how photography is actually used, covering such diverse subjects, among many, as: advertising; photojournalism; propaganda; sports; war photography; even nude photography, this surprisingly long article accompanied by two suitably artistic illustrations (pornography get its own - unillustrated - section); and an all-too-short piece on the social functions of photography.
In a multi-author volume encompassing such a broad discipline there is bound to be unevenness. The country and regional surveys, while providing a very welcome balance to the usual Euro-US slant in photographic histories, frequently have a cursory feel and only report on the early part of a place's history, for which presumably secondary sources of information are relatively plentiful. The degree of coverage depends both on the strength of a country's photographic tradition but crucially the availability of scholars able to write the articles, and consequently can appear to be arbitrary. So Burma's entry ends in 1910 and Ceylon's in 1900, with nothing for Myanmar or Sri Lanka respectively, whereas India's is comparatively extensive - more than for the entire continent of Africa - and is up-to-date. Egypt and Palestine, significant photographically, are subsumed under the general 'Middle East, early photography in the' (Iran/Persia is treated separately as well, though typically only the early period). South America is particularly patchy, only Argentina, Brazil and Peru making an appearance.
To be fair, areas are included which have not been given their due in other encyclopaedias (Oceania, for example, doesn't generally feature in photographic reference books as a heading), so their appearance at all is welcome, but most country overviews are so brief that that they can only be a taster, and the reader interested in a particular place would need to look elsewhere for further information. The initials of the editor appear frequently in the book, so he must have had a problem finding sufficient contributors and was forced to step in to fill what gaps he could. Hopefully missing or abbreviated items will be rectified in future editions.
Occasionally a substantial item is supplemented by a short article on a sub-topic, and these can be puzzling, the focus just on Lucknow in the Indian Mutiny article rather than other cities, for example. There is an article on 'Early Postcards in East Asia and Indo-China' accompanying the general entry on postcards, with no reason given why this part of the world was chosen rather than another. 'Migration and Photography' is accompanied by a page and a half on the Belle Vue Studio in Bradford, yet the railways entry cries out in vain for elaboration. These articles seem to reflect contributors' personal interests rather than the editorial scheme and while interesting are perhaps not the best use of space.
Coverage of individual photographers is broad if inevitably shallow, with many potted biographies. A number are naturally familiar, others totally unknown to all but specialist photographic historians. Practitioners from Japan are particularly well represented, in addition to a long country survey and sidebar on 'Early Japanese Tourist Images', and theoreticians, such as Roland Barthes, Walter Benjamin, Siegfried Kracauer and Susan Sontag, are also included. Every entry in the Companion contains suggestions for further reading plus cross references, and there is a substantial bibliography at the end of the book, as well as a chronology ending in 2005, a list of websites (no mention of flickr, which shows how quickly the internet moves) and an index.
The photographs, of which there are about 300, again some well known, others not, are generally well chosen. Particularly amusing is a colour image taken by Otto Pfenninger at Brighton in 1906, with a small child showing its bare backside as it roots around in the wet sand. Brighton beach may not have changed much over the last century, but the mores of photographing children certainly have. The entry on Lewis Carroll seems determined to rescue him from imputations of paedophilia by simply not referring to it. That on child photography though does discuss the ambiguities, though not the occasional moral panics, surrounding taking pictures of children, even in the privacy of one's own bath, and these issues are also touched on in 'Law and Photography'.
It is always amazing how the work of so many contributors can be brought together into a coherent whole, and as with all such books, one marvels at the logistics. At a time of huge changes in photography, the Oxford Companion has managed to capture the trajectory of the medium, from the earliest experiments to the latest techniques. It will make a welcome addition to a photographic reference collection. Just make sure the shelf is strong enough to hold it.
