Place in the photographic bibliography
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This fact is a consequence of the position that photography has now taken in our culture as a main support and often a substitute for speech in achieving specific goals. In the midst of this confusion we too must just as the bookstore clerk would do define the coordinates of the context in which the books which are characterized as purely photographic are included. Of course all boundaries are relative and many books could easily fit into more than one category. In this case however we are interested in their main function and this is photographic that is the value and role of photographs as images and not as secondary information. In photo books the photos do not illustrate but are themselves their content.
Consequently the main and certainly not the only commentary on photo books e-commerce photo editing should logically focus on the photographic weight of the images and positive or negative comments should constitute photographic criticism. Deviations from this general classification direction certainly exist but the general orientation does not change. These skews are mainly due to three common and related phenomena. The first is due to the tricks which the publisher almost inevitably resorts to in order to increase his sales the main one of which is to promote the photo book through the depicted subject of the photographs and not through the name of the photographer or the artistic content of the photographs.
The second consists in the happy coincidence that a book of photographs which successfully serves another purpose was made with the photographer’s desire and the consequent freedom granted to him to incorporate the photographs into his personal work by taking them with an entirely personal aesthetic. And the third is that they coexist in the book together with the photos and texts that occupy a significant part of the book texts unrelated or related to the images which in any case raise the question of whether the specific book is available and bought more for them or for the photos. In all three cases above the bookstore clerk and we will have to assess whether the book’s intent and the importance of the photographs advocate for the book to take.