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Disappearing Witness: Change in Twentieth-Century American Photography by Gretchen Garner The John Hopkins University Press/306pp./$34.95 (hb).
Very few histories of photography read like novels. Obviously as a photographer, a photo-historian, and a photo-educator, I stand as a very specific audience, one that by definition is going to be receptive and critical, one that belongs to the same circles as the author. Gretchen Gamer's Disappearing Witness: Change in Twentieth-Century American Photography is well-documented without overwhelming the reader with too many details, it is well-organized, challenging at times, and clever: in a few words a pleasurable experience in form and content in an area of literature that is not usually associated with such descriptions.
Writing a history of twentieth-century American photography in 306 pages, in what is in "Histories" standard a small format book, having a text that breathes in spacious margins is unusual. Starting with a first chapter (out of thirteen) titled "Pho- tography of Witness" and associating Muybridge, Lartigue, Cartier-Bresson, Ansel Adams, Avedon, and Helen Levitt...