Nearby Café Home > Art & Photography > Photocritic International

Get new posts by email:
Follow me on Mastodon: @adcoleman@hcommons.social     Mastodon logo

Time Capsule 1974: Collier’s Encyclopedia Yearbook

I took the assignment of writing this annual round-up of events in the photo world as an opportunity to create a time capsule of sorts for users of Collier’s Encyclopedia. I just came across the one that appeared 40 years ago in the 1975 edition of the Yearbook, synopsizing the year 1974 (and the last months of of 1973). Here it is. […]

Forgotten Laurels: John Szarkowski and Cornell Capa (1995)

Looking at John Szarkowski’s photographs and Cornell Capa’s, asking myself — based on that early evidence of personal tendency and taste — which of the two had surprised me most as advocates for photography by transcending the narrow-mindedness to which performers in any medium are prone in order to create an institutional environment with an atmosphere of tolerance and encouragement for all, the unequivocal answer that came was Cornell Capa. […]

What Makes One Photo Worth $2.9 Million? (2007)

[Checking the news this past December 12, I learned from Forbes that “On December 9 PRNewswire announced that Australian photographer Peter Lik sold a photograph entitled ‘Phantom’ for a record-setting $6.5 million. ‘Phantom,’ now the world’s most expensive photograph ever sold, was shot in a subterranean cavern in Arizona’s Antelope Canyon.” (See Rachel Hennessey’s report, […]

After the Kodak Century (2)

The irony, of course, is that instead of getting devastated by the digital evolution the Eastman Kodak Corporation could have owned it. The very first digital camera, after all, got born in one of Kodak’s own labs, the invention of one of its engineers, Steven Sasson, in 1975. […]

After the Kodak Century (1)

In September 2013, just months before I wrote this, Kodak emerged from bankruptcy, much diminished as a consequence of having sold off most of its patents, downsized and reconfigured now as a new-tech company concentrating on developing commercial and consumer digital printers and inks for the publishing, packaging, and advertising sectors. An enterprise that for almost a hundred years ruled as the undisputed alpha dog of its industry has fallen abruptly back into the pack. […]