Five star photos in a two star book

Photography: the whole story. ISBN 978-3791347349

THE PHOTOS

I thought the selection was excellent, from Joseph Niepce 1826 shot to Bryan Smith's 2015 color photo of the Empire State Building. The book's scope is broad, too, with portraits. documentary, news, war, still life, art, photojournalism, fashion, sport, nature in fact any kind of photography that involves some creative input by the photographer rather than photos for the record like first past the post horseracing or police mug shots.

The photos are obviously arranged historically,   pages 20 to 363 have photos before 1945 and 364 to 945 photos up to 2015. The pictures, obviously reflecting the author's selection, had some omissions, in my view. Nothing from Stephen Shore, David Bailey, Diane Arbus, Irving Penn, Helmut Newton or Annie Leibovitz. On the other hand, there are plenty of photographers I've never heard of so their work is a voyage of discovery for me.

THE BOOK

The before you die numbers book is a standard for general publishers: 1000 record covers, 200 places to visit, 1001 books to read et cetera. They all require images but one on photos is different because it's the image that counts. To put 1001 photos, one to a page, in a brick of a book (960 paperback pages, printed with a 175 screen on a matt art paper) doesn't seem the best way to reveal artistic intent. So many of them are not much bigger than postcards or largish thumbnails. To a certain extent, this is because there is too much background copy about the photos.

The book's front pages have an unusual index listing titles, is a reader really going to look for Congo Free State page 154, or Polar panorama page 842? The back pages are more useful with a glossary and photographer index (though regrettably in tiny type).

'1001 photographs' is a sort of history of the subject and a better title could be Juliet Hacking's 'Photography: the whole story' published in 2012 (ISBN 978-3791347349).