Inside the Photograph. Writings on Twentieth-Century Photography

Peter C. Bunnell has been a major force in shaping the discourse about photography’s past and present. During his thirty-some years as a profoundly influential professor and curator at Princeton University, he has written extensively - articles, books, catalog essays. This up-to-date collection of texts selected from work published throughout his career will make a significant contribution to the field that he has done so much to establish and to nurture. Most of the thirty-four essays are devoted to individual (predominantly American) photographers, with the balance written about three key galleries that played a crucial early role in the recognition and marketing of modern photography. The cast of characters and the approach vary from essay to essay, but in each case Bunnell brings to bear his own distinctive sensibility and insight. While encouraging the reader to see previously overlooked aspects of the individual images he discusses so eloquently, he also provides an invaluable historical context for the photographers and their work.
Over the years, Bunnell has sustained deep and mutually respectful relationships with photographers ranging from Minor White to Ruth Bernhard, Aaron Siskind, and Jerry Uelsmann. His unsurpassed understanding of their work as well as his clear-eyed grasp of twentieth-century photography from Alfred Stieglitz to contemporary masters makes this an enlightening overview of a field that has undergone extraordinary changes during the period chronicled in the book. Bunnell offers a unique personal perspective on the world of art photography as it morphed from a small group of practitioners whose work was collected by an even smaller group of devotees to the supercharged international marketplace it has become.