Light Matters.
Aperture, New York, 2005. 256 pp., 30 black-and-white illustrations, 5½x8½".
“Though it has reportedly been dying for years, photography is out there reproducing faster than rabbits. Yet it is in danger from more quarters than mere liberty at the moment—from the possibility that digitization will discredit standard photographic practices altogether, from the media, from shrinking print outlets, and from a kind of interior malaise, perhaps due to getting fat without getting sassy . . . Photography is far from dead, but the challengers are already in place, and fully armed.”–Vicki Goldberg, from “A Quarter Century of Photography”
Vicki Goldberg, one of the leading voices in the field of photography criticism, is well known for her cogent and perceptive writing, which is regularly featured in such national publications as the New York Times, American Photographer, and Vanity Fair. Aperture’s Vicki Goldberg: Light Matters gathers for the first time a selection of this remarkable author’s essays and criticism, culled from her writings published over the past twenty-five years.
Goldberg’s take on photography is both insightful and encompassing: her subjects range from pop imagery to war journalism, from photo-booth portraits to manipulated digital imagery, from the “boredom” of voyeurism to the great preponderance of tragic photographs in the news. She brings new light to the work of the medium’s “old masters,” among them Walker Evans, Lotte Jacobi, and Lartigue, writing with equal acuity about contemporary trailblazers such as Bill Viola, Daido Moriyama, and Bastienne Schmidt. Goldberg also tackles provocative larger issues facing the medium, such as the potentially “transgressive” nature of photographs, and the camera’s powerful role in a culture of commodification.
Dismissing clichés and deftly negotiating the many diverging paths photography now follows, Goldberg demonstrates how to consider not just photographic images themselves, but their impact, and the meaning of that impact. Vicki Goldberg: Light Matters showcases a writer of great intelligence, wit, and insight, whose understanding of this multifarious and evolving medium is unsurpassed. Vicki Goldberg is the author of The Power of Photography: How Photographs Changed Our Lives (1991), and editor of Photography in Print: Writings from 1816 to the Present (1981). In 1997 she was the recipient of the International Center of Photography’s prestigious Infinity Award. Goldberg writes on photography and the arts for the New York Times, Vanity Fair, American Photo, and other publications.
This volume brings together a selection of Vicki Goldberg’s published writings, culled from the last twenty-five years and from multiple publications, such as Vanity Fair and The New York Times. One of photography’s most revered and beloved critics, Goldberg examines both the history of photography and our current state of affairs with curiosity, wit, and cutting insight. The book is divided into essays about specific photographers—Parr, Moriyama, and Arbus to name a few—and into thematic pieces covering a range of subjects relevant to photography—race, sex, life, and death included. Whether she examines advertising as a powerful visual reference or documentary photography's dual power and impotency against poverty, she explores all with rich complexity, embracing contradictions and reaffirming the wonderment of the photographic medium. In these times when many wonder if critics even like the works they write about and when, in fact, some proclaim the art of criticism dead, Vicki Goldberg continues to shine untarnished. Through her punchy humor and dead-on observations—whether she's taking a photograph to task or articulating its value—her genuine warmth and commitment to photography prevails in this wonderful, engaging collection. - Denise Wolff
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