Book Review: Photowork
Courtesy of Aperture
Aperture Foundation’s Photowork: Forty Photographers on Process and Practice is a book for the curious photographer, whether emerging or well-established. Sasha Wolf, editor of Photowork, presents the same 12 questions to 40 different photographers, expecting to prove the range that exists both in the medium and in a photographer’s approach to their final product. Luckily enough, the results wield just that. Acting as a manifesto of sorts, Photowork aims to depict an authentic image of the creative process, as it pertains to photography. All the photographers featured focus on their process as it relates to building a body of work as opposed to a single image. Why trust them? Because they’ve done it successfully. To this effect, the emerging photographer may use it as a guide through their journey in the medium while the established photographer may use it as a humbling reminder of all that it takes.
Robert Adams, Sally, WeldCounty, Colorado , 1984, from To Make It Home (Aperture, 1989) © Robert Adams, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco
Dawoud Bey, West 124th Street and Lenox Avenue, 2016, from Harlem Redux © Dawoud Bey
Moving in alphabetical order, starting with Robert Adams and ending with Vanessa Winship, each photographer is asked to consider a number of things from how they begin shooting a body of work to how they determine its end. The first few photographers alone offer vastly different perspectives on the matter. Robert Adams, for example, talks about photography as a form of discovery – something that is rarely planned but always loved and respected. The photographer that follows, Dawoud Bey, takes the opposite approach. He describes the need to pursue a carefully envisioned concept because it is the way which he most effectively discusses the themes or ideas he wants audiences to engage with. The photographer after him, Alejandro Cartagena, is somewhat of a combo, having mentioned both Adams’ and Bey’s approaches as conducive to his own work in the past.
Vanessa Winship, Untitled, from she dances on Jackson (2013) © Vanessa Winship
All in all, it is a feat that this assortment of artists be gathered in the span of just over 100 pages worth of text. That’s right – text only. While the book is a collection of interviews where artists talk about their photographic processes and practices, there are no actual photos to be looked at between the questioning. At first, I thought it was silly. A book on photography without any photos? But this was clearly a deliberate decision. Since the artists speak specifically to creating a body of work, I can see how it would be difficult to pick and choose any one or couple of photos to represent the whole when the conversation calls for understanding a series – both how it is made and how it exists in the larger scope of things. Plus, including any number of photos of the many artists’ in question might have been disruptive to the ideas being discussed, when, in fact, the inquisitive reader is already doing a deep-dive on any names that interest them.
The concept is in the title. Photowork is about the undertaking of the medium and, even more so, how that undertaking changes based on artist – making for a very approachable book with a wealth of knowledge valuable to any photographer, especially those still finding their voice.
