Photographers
of Genius at the Getty
by Weston
Naef
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles,
CA, 2004
176 pp., illus. 54 b/w, 60 col. Trade,
$60.00; paper, $35.00
ISBN: 0-89236-748-2, ISBN: 0-89236-749-0.
Published to accompany the exhibition
of the same name.
Reviewed by Julia Peck
University Wales Newport
julia.peck@newport.ac.uk
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles,
has published Photographers of Genius
at the Getty, a celebration of the
twentieth birthday of the photography
collection. Written by Weston Naef, the
book briefly outlines how the collection
was established, rationale for the selection
of the five hundred and eighty photographers
in the collection, and a focused choice
of thirty-eight photographers for the
book. Each photographer is represented
by three images and accompanying text.
The book is beautifully printed and bound,
large in format9.5 x 12 inches
and 176 pages in length. Each image is
provided with a page of its own and a
large white border; and the text typically
opens with a quote from the photographer
or relevant writer. The book is roughly
chronological in layout; it uses images
that are visually captivating, playing
with the ambiguity of the images
meaning and content. Naef seems to have
an eye for photographs and their mystery;
the photographs are at once indefinable
yet speak in eloquent ways.
The seductiveness of the book is hard
to measure thoughthe contents
of the book are very familiar, and many
of these images have been seen before
in similar collection publications. Naef
periodically seems to be able to succinctly
edit sequences of three images, which
sum up specific practices by photographers.
One of the best examples of this are the
three photographs by Cartier Bresson.
If there ever were a selection of his
images that would establish him as a quirky
observer of the world around him, rather
than a straight documentary photographer,
then this would be it. Heyres, France,
1932, shows a girl jumping on the
beach, her coat flying out behind her,
followed by the very famous Valencia,
Spain, 1933 of a boy next to a wall,
his expression and purpose unknown. The
last image is Spain, 1933, which
Naef prosaically claims to be a man waiting
in a station resting on his case, but
his gesture and posture argues for a more
fraught and ambiguous moment. The human
drama proposed through this edit is not
reducible to a few simple statements,
nor necessarily connected directly to
a world event yet they potentially speak
about the confusion of existence in the
pre-civil war years in Spain.
The delight of Cartier-Bressons
selection is not sustained though, and
in other instances, Naef seems to opt
for providing an overview of a long and
diverse career in photography that encompasses
changes in approach, style, content, and
audience. Carleton Watkins seems to be
a case in point here, and it surely would
have been tempting to have three images
of Watkins Yosemite work. Instead
Naef shows some of the diversity of Watkins
photographic output but also stops short
of fully acknowledging the extent to which
Watkins work was commercially defined
and driven: It would have been interesting
to know if Thompsons Seedless
Grapes, 1880 was made for a commission.
The image would have lost none of its
power for this discussion, and it would
have made a more thorough, methodological
sense of the work included in Watkins
section.
The books visual and methodological
inconsistency seem to come from an assimilation
of some of the ideas from critical writings
on photography while maintaining the tradition
and structure of the art-history model
of approach to photography. The whole
production, layout, and text of the book
emphasizes photography as art rather than
a social history of photography. This
is no surprise as the title Photographers
of Genius makes a very bold and
possibly arrogant claim to authorship
and originality on the part of the photographers
included. Indeed, Naef makes this claim
doubly clear in his introduction through
the use of Kants doctrine of truth
and beauty. In the light of critical work
undertaken since the 1970s this is problematic,
but it does create a context for the inclusion
of photographers interested in documentary
and social reform (Walker Evans, Cartier-Bresson,
Lewis Hine), together with those who sought
an aesthetic appreciation of their subject
(Edward Weston, Charles Sheeler and Joseph
Sudek). The setting seems apt for the
emphasis on the early practitioners of
photography where both photographers and
critics readily used this kind of language
to describe the emerging technologies
and images, but it is limiting for discussing
the hugely popular and commercial aspects
of photography emerging in the later 1800s
and the huge changes in direction with
modernism. It is therefore not surprising
that Naef has not used these criteria
to examine the more contemporary works
in the Getty Collection, and they remain
absent from the book.
Its not just the reproduction of
familiar images that makes this book feel
like a repetition. Similar overviews have
been available from other collections
that use the same art historical framework;
Beaumont Newhall and the Gernsheims were
leaders in this field some seventy years
ago. It is not necessarily a surprise
that Naef should follow in their footsteps,
having worked in the Department of Photography
at MOMA, the birthplace of Newhalls
History and where Naef embarked
on projects such as The Era of Exploration.
However, this familiarity unfortunately
provides the book with the feeling that
its all been seen before; Naefs
primary purpose seems to have been the
establishment of a collection that would
rival the other great American collections.
This seems very forcefully articulated
when looking at the front cover image:
Edward Westons Nude, Santa Monica,
1936. This image featured on an Edward
Weston monograph from 1995, in a book
that has the same dimensions as this one.
This familiarity does raise questions
about the institutional support that makes
Naefs position feasible. His stance
is not necessarily surprising considering
his training and experience, but the Getty
seems to have been an ideal place for
the continuation of the art history of
photography. The J. Paul Getty Trust supports
both the J. Paul Getty Museum and the
Getty Research Institute. The Institute
provides a context for the critical analysis
of art, and their studies on photography
include the kinds of analysis missing
from this volume. It is clear from this
that the Getty Trust has established both
art historical and more methodologically
rigorous sites for the discussion of photography
but has also sought to keep them separate.
Having noted this context though, it seems
that the Getty, with Naef at the helm,
has indeed established a collection that
has come of age. The images they hold
are as familiar and hallowed as
other major collections, and therefore
the collection must have the same importance.
The list of photographers at the back
of the book is long, but it is a pity
that so few of the unknown names remain
in obscurity. This might have made the
celebration look and feel more unique.
To a viewer who is new to photography,
or at least to the collections of photography,
this book is a solid and predictable starting
point, and also full of images that capture
and surprise the viewer. To a more experienced
reader what remains surprising about this
album is the ability of the image to be
arrestingdespite having been
exposed so many times before.
It seems, that overall, the book cannot
be recommended for its text, methodology,
or even for its information, despite the
enormous repository of knowledge that
Naef has acquired in order to produce
this volume. However, there is a lot to
be said for a publication that visually
redeems itself despite this criticism
and I suspect this will be the source
of its success.