Focal Press (i.e., the Media Know-how part of Elsevier Publishing) has simply printed a "book" (a pristine copy of which I've been fortunately shopping by way of after it had - actually - landed on my doorstep with a loud THUD!) that has all the inform-story signs of being a traditional scholarly reference for photographers and college students of photography for years to return: The Focal Encyclopedia of Pictures, Fourth Edition, edited by Michael R. Peres (also out there from Amazon).
The encyclopedia is a major update of its predecessor volumes (the primary edition, a traditional in its time when it was published in 1956, has been long out of print and is clearly extremely dated given all of the advances in photographic science, engineering and art which have occurred since then; the third edition (edited by Richard D. Zakia and Leslie Stroebel), which I own and love, is simply a decade outdated but has very little on the burgeoning discipline of digital photography; still, it contains a wealth of useful data and, though it's also out of print, continues to be out there in some used e-book shops).
The brand new fourth edition has 880 pages in all, over 400 images, covers all main (and minor) areas of photography (ranging from pictures and artwork / society / commerce, museums, the science of pictures, galleries, workshops, training, publishing, historical past, idea, observe, criticism, and brief biographies of selected photographers within the 20th Century), and comes with a CD-ROM that incorporates the complete (and fully searchable) textual content + pictures in the book (this one stunning, and most welcome, addition is worth the "value of admission" on its own).
The book could be very handsomely produced, with strong, thick covers and thick, semi-shiny pages that give the quantity a "classy feel" and give the general impression that the editors designed it to be nicely thumbed and used, and to last an extended, lengthy while (which I pray it does since most of my picture books, particularly reference works, are likely to turn into tattered and develop nested dog-ears very quickly, as I repeatedly dive in for the shear pleasure of discovering some morsel of photographic delight).
The encyclopedia does have one unlucky, but arguably unavoidable, downside: it's so huge and heavy that it is unattainable to simply "whip it out" on your lap and sink into (a flimsy chair) for some leisurely reading; you need to plan on when and where you can be studying this monster! ... and, God forbid, don't even consider taking it to an upstairs room to read in bed: if the staircase does not collapse from the weight earlier than you get there, your mattress certainly will! ;-)
Kudos to Focal Press' editorial board for producing such a effective masterwork. It can possible develop into the "commonplace" such reference for all current and future generations of scholars of photography (and, I think, fairly a few working professionals as well).
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