Aperture Magazine Anthology

Published on the occasion of its sixtieth anniversary, this is the first ever anthology of Aperture magazine. This long-awaited overview provides a selection of the best critical writing from the first 25 years of the magazine—the period spanning the tenure of cofounder and editor Minor White. Aperture was established in 1952 by a group of photographers, including Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange, Barbara Morgan and historian-curators Beaumont and Nancy Newhall. Their intention was to provide a forum in which photographers can talk straight to each other, discuss the problems that face photography as profession an art, share their experiences, comment on what goes on, descry the new potentials. With its far-ranging interests in diverse photographic styles, myriad themes and subjects (including a strong streak of spirituality in diverse forms) and an adventurous commitment to a broad international range, Aperture has had a profound impact on the course of fine-art photography. The texts and visuals in this anthology were selected by Peter C. Bunnell, White's protégé and an early member of the Aperture staff, who went on to become a major force in photography as an influential writer, curator and professor. Several articles are reproduced in facsimile, and the publication is enlivened throughout by other features, including a portfolio of exceptional covers, as well as a selection of the colophons (short statements or quotes) that appeared at the front of each magazine.

Format: Hardback
Number of pages: 455
Publication date: 2012-10-31
Measurements: 7 x 9.7 x 2 inches
ISBN: 9781597111966

Peter C. Bunnell is the McAlpin Professor of the History of Photography and Modern Art Emeritus at Princeton University and faculty curator of photography emeritus at the Princeton University Art Museum, where he was also responsible for the Minor White Archive. A graduate of the Rochester Institute of Technology (where he first studied with Minor White), he holds graduate degrees from Ohio University and Yale University. Prior to coming to Princeton in 1972, Bunnell was curator of photography at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. He has written reviews and commentary for Afterimage, Aperture, Art in America, Camera, Creative Camera, the New Republic, Print Collector’s Newsletter, and Untitled, among other publications. He is the author of the monograph Minor White: The Eye That Shapes (1989) and he edited Photography at Princeton (1998). Bunnell has published two anthologies of his essays: Degrees of Guidance (1993) and Inside the Photograph (2006). He edited two anthologies of writings: A Photographic Vision: Pictorial Photography, 1889–1923 (1980) and Edward Weston on Photography (1983), and was coeditor of two major reprint series, The Literature of Photography and Sources of Modern Photography. Bunnell has taught at New York University, Dartmouth College, and Yale University, and has lectured extensively in the United States and abroad. The former national chairman of the Society for Photographic Education, he was also chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Friends of Photography. He is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain.