 |
 |
| Creative Camera: 30 Years of Writing was published by Manchester University Press, 2000. |
|
| Other articles by Fiona Kearney |
|
|
|
|
| The Story So Far |
|
| Creative Camera: 30 Years of Writing is an anthology of texts compiled by current editor David Brittain as a "contribution to the complex and little understood subject of the history of photography in post-War Britain". In chronological order, the book features articles, interviews, reviews and letters that presumably capture the range of ideas, disputes and issues covered in the magazine over the last three decades. It is refreshing to cover so much ground in the relatively short documents and Brittain's introduction is invaluable in this regard. He outlines a history of the magazine contextualising and interpreting the subsequent texts within the framework of various editorial decisions and funding imperatives. Creative Camera had a strong formalist bias in its early years of publication, taking as its reference point the work achieved in the field by John Szarkowski, the great champion of photographic modernism. Szarkowski provides the book's opening text, Photography and the Mass Media, but this is neatly followed by a piece by Roland Barthes, as if to signal the complexity and influence that French theorists would bring to bear on the magazine. The inclusion of postmodern debates from the early eighties is explained not just as the result of new contributors such as Victor Burgin and Jo Spence, but also, as Brittain points out, by the need to accommodate a newly theory-literate audience, as well as an Arts Council anxious to reflect its own initiatives in the realm of photography. |
|
| A great strength of this book is Brittain's decision to focus in on particular moments in the magazine's history, for instance presenting three texts from the end of 1982 when Burgin's Thinking Photography was published. The critical juncture this represents for Creative Camera is a microcosm of the formalist/postmodern dispute that reverberated across the humanities at the time. In fact, the entire book could be read as a desire to represent and resolve the opposition between the modernist accent on the image as an autonomous representation, and the postmodern desire to efface the importance of any individual photograph (or photographer) in a play of references that stresses context over form. In a sense, Brittain is posing the ontological question, What is special about Creative Camera?, and the contextual query What is the magazine's relationship to the world?. The answer to both questions as formulated in this book would seem to lie between the 'decisive moment' of the individual texts and the overall perspective provided by Brittain's incisive introduction. |
|
| The effectiveness of the current editorial stint is that Brittain realises that, like photography, Creative Camera is above all a discursive space. The more recent contributions to the magazine reflect this, as does the important fact highlighted by Stephen Bull in the last issue of Source that Creative Camera features a letters page. This is a crucial valve for reader-response, a vital opportunity to engage in, as well as with, the magazine. These letters, as well as various other important aspects of the publication, its information bulletins, advertisements, listings, and most obviously the photographs themselves, are for the most part omitted from the book. This is acknowledged in the book's title and remit, 30 Years of Writing, but it would perhaps have been interesting to include a survey of some of the photographs displayed in the magazine, even a chronology of Creative Camera covers, as a visual complement to the images used as illustrations. |
|
| As well as outlining the historical importance of Creative Camera, mostly as witness to thirty years of photographic discourse, Brittain argues for the significance of the magazine for a contemporary audience on account of its regularity, longevity, specialisation and plurality of opinion. In the December issue of Creative Camera, Geoffrey Batchen cogently states the position and challenges facing contemporary photographic criticism, and the next generation of photo-critics he addresses will find in the Creative Camera book a valuable record and resource. This article would seem to provide a fitting conclusion to the Creative Camera book but it is too recent for inclusion, and instead Batchen's keen mind closes the anthology with a reflection on the historical ties that bind photography and digital computing. As Creative Camera continues to provide provocative and informative work, this book is a timely document of its achievements to date. |
|
| Fiona Kearney |
|
