Humanity takes solace in the notion that the “good” is an objective fact, a model of excellence that transcends subjective bias and cultural conditioning. But what if that which we esteem is simply an extension of popular thought? This question is at the heart of art historian Kim Beil’s new book, Good Pictures A History of Popular Photography (Stanford University Press), which traces the history of photography through 50 widespread trends across the United States between spanning 1989 to 2019.
.
Organized into six chronological sections, Good Pictures explores the role instructional primers played in helping aspiring photographers learn “how to make good pictures.” Beil examines the rise of approaches that have dominated a particular moment in time, such as soft focus, Hollywood Glamour, motion blur, lens flare, and fish-eye — and examines how the industry itself helps to commodify the notion of “good” in order to reinforce, rather than challenge, the prevailing social, political, and cultural ideologies.
.
Throughout Good Pictures, Beil teases out a distinctively, but perhaps not exclusively, American trait: the commodification of style and the manufacture of groupthink. We see this in the way in which photographic styles are recycled in an endless loop — emerging, disappearing, and then returning at a later time.
.
.
