Covering Photography: A Metaphorical History of Photography Through Fiction and Poetry Book Covers

By:
Karl Baden
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‘Covering Photography’ explores the relationship between important images from the History of Photography and the cover designs of novels, textbooks and volumes of poetry; books whose nominal subject matter have little to do with the cover images or photography per se.

In it’s transformation from photograph to book cover, the original image is often cropped, colored, reversed or otherwise altered to fit the aesthetic intent of the designer or the more practical concerns of the publisher. One is invited to consider how an image originally produced as an independent aesthetic object can be re-used as an illustration for an unrelated concept, whether as a visual cipher for the book’s subject, or an attention-getting sales device; how does a shift in context affect a photograph’s meaning?

A work in progress, ‘Covering Photography’ spans the history of the medium, from Niepce, Daguerre and Fox Talbot through Cindy Sherman, Nan Goldin and other established contemporary practitioners. Baden views this ongoing compendium as an alternate take on photographic history.


Keywords: Books, Photography, Design
Stream: Books, Writing and Reading
Presentation Type: 30 minute Paper Presentation in English
Paper: A paper has not yet been submitted.

Karl Baden

Adjunct Associate Professor, Fine Arts Department, Boston College
Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, USA

Karl Baden is a photographer and member of the Fine Arts faculty at Boston College. As part of his photographic practice, he has often referenced the History of Photography and the appropriation of iconic imagery by mass culture. Baden contends that as High Art filters through the strata of popular culture, it is often only its formal qualities, or the ‘look’ of the work, which survives to be recycled as, in many cases, elements of illustration and design. In 2003, Baden began to assemble what he views as an ‘Alternative History of Photography’ through images appropriated by graphic designers for the dust jackets of volumes of fiction and poetry. Of particular interest is the question of how a photograph, initially conceived as an independent aesthetic object, is re-used as a visual cipher for a book’s subject, or as an attention-getting sales device; i.e., how does a shift in context affect a photograph’s meaning? In October – November of 2005, Baden exhibited books from his collection at the Carpenter Center for Visual Art at Harvard University. An article on Baden’s collection and theories is to be published in the international graphic design journal, Eye, in March 2006.

Ref: B06P0082