User:Lbattich/Narratives/Photo Book Proposals

1st Proposal: E.H. Gombrich's The Story of Art

Description: A page by page reproduction of an edition of E.H. Gombrich's The Story of Art, with all text removed, and preserving the images in their original layout.

Context & aims:

First published in 1950 by Phaidon, E.H. Gombrich's The Story of Art is widely regarded both as a seminal work of art criticism and as one of the most accessible introductions to the visual arts. After more than 60 years of continuous publication and renewed editions, it is currently the best selling art book of all time. Gombrich's survey of art and his brand of criticism have thus become highly influential for several generations of art historians, artists and their publics, and art professionals generally.

The intention in reproducing the book with all text removed is based on Andre Malraux's notion of the "museum without walls" (musée imaginaire). With this term, Malraux argues that the advent of photographic reproduction of artworks has created a vision or generalized idea of an imaginary global museum of the world's artistic heritage. The use of photographs in scholarly studies on art has given the impression of the field art as a compact totality, and allowed comparision between consolidated styles.

However, digital media and the accesibility and proliferation of information has somehow changed the status of the photographic reproduction, especially as most images circulate without the appropriate context, without the scholarly and expert commentary that had accompanied these images.

Given the prominence of photographic reproduction in Gombrich's monograph, the proposed publication seeks to examine how these reproductions work within the book, without the expert's words to direct their interpretation.

Introduction and first chapter example: File:Gombrich-chap1.pdf