Artmachine: A Reinvention of Photography, 1959-1999 (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780996928007)

More than just a history or a biography, Clark Worswick's ArtMachine: A Reinvention of Photography, 1959-1999 is an insiders view of the photography world. It has been written by a practicing photographer, who was also the founding photography curator of the oldest museum in America, and who became an important collector of photography. In his introduction to this book, the author wrote, I began taking photographs and tried to learn the history of a neglected, beaten down, battered medium few people took seriously in the art world. I wandered a world barren of respect during decades of struggle for photography. In 1959, on the planet earth, there was not a single dealer who represented a single photographer's work, because photography was not an art. This is also a book about love and dangerous travel, and the heroic reinvention of photography in the art world. To date, few books have appeared on the texts of a working photographer s life immersed in projects that cross years, then decades. ArtMachine: A Reinvention of Photography is the story of the long war for photography s acceptance during the last decades of the 20th century. It was also a historic moment, and a time never to be repeated, when you could buy fabulous pictures that no one anywhere ... knew anything about. Clark Worswick (1940-) was born in Berkeley, California. Abandoning America when he was eighteen years old, for years he travelled between India and Europe. Staying in Maharajas palaces, or in indigent pilgrims shelters he took photographs, and collected Indian antiquities. In the first wave of young westerners to pass though the Iranian and Afghan deserts, his first book of dangerous travel, The Orchid House: Art Smuggling and Appointments in India and Afghanistan, recounts seldom described travels in far Asia. The book ArtMachjine: A Reinvention of Photography, 1959-1999 deals with photography s acceptance, as one of the most dynamic and important adjuncts, in an increasingly internationalized art world. During 1959 he began collecting 19th century photographs in Calcutta. He later became the First Research Fellow in Film and Photography at Harvard University. His exhibitions and books on 19th century photography of India, China, Japan and the Middle East have identified scores of non-European artists working in the medium. Books he has done have been named "Best of the Year" by: The NY Times, The London Times, The Washington Post, The Sunday Times, Newsweek and Time Magazine. Asked where photography was in 1959 and 1999 the author replied, "In 1959 photography was nowhere as an art. In 1999 photography as an art was everywhere."