Photography (Art Essentials) (Art Essentials, 16)

I got this book just to get a basic sense of how Photography changed over the years, in process, aesthetic, philosophy, etc.Bate is not exhaustive; he doesn't treat each process in extreme detail. Instead he goes through different periods, dedicating a page to key figures and displaying an example of their work.I enjoyed this approach; it's easy going and provides a good ground to start further research into different areas. The only thing I didn't like so much was that, in some cases, he describes an artist's work broadly but the work he shows does not correspond to his description, leading me to question whether the work depicted or described is representative of their work and not just a one-off oddity.And of course, over the years there have been so many new photographers, it would be impossible to include everyone. Throughout the book, he has sections dedicated to key exhibitions of a particular period. These are very good to have, however for some reason they tend to leave out at least one example of a photographer's work.