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Good Pictures: A History of Popular Photography
A picture-rich field guide to American photography, from daguerreotype to digital.
We are all photographers now, with camera phones in hand and social media accounts at the ready. And we know which pictures we like. But what makes a "good picture"? And how could anyone think those old styles were actually good? Soft-focus yearbook photos from the '80s are now hopelessly--and happily--outdated, as are the low-angle portraits fashionable in the 1940s or the blank stares of the 1840s. From portraits to products, landscapes to food pics, Good Pictures proves that the history of photography is a history of changing styles.
In a series of short, engaging essays, Kim Beil uncovers the origins of fifty photographic trends and investigates their original appeal, their decline, and sometimes their reuse by later generations of photographers. Drawing on a wealth of visual material, from vintage how-to manuals to magazine articles for working photographers, this full-color book illustrates the evolution of trends with hundreds of pictures made by amateurs, artists, and commercial photographers alike. Whether for selfies or sepia tones, the rules for good pictures are always shifting, reflecting new ways of thinking about ourselves and our place in the visual world.
We are all photographers now, with camera phones in hand and social media accounts at the ready. And we know which pictures we like. But what makes a "good picture"? And how could anyone think those old styles were actually good? Soft-focus yearbook photos from the '80s are now hopelessly--and happily--outdated, as are the low-angle portraits fashionable in the 1940s or the blank stares of the 1840s. From portraits to products, landscapes to food pics, Good Pictures proves that the history of photography is a history of changing styles.
In a series of short, engaging essays, Kim Beil uncovers the origins of fifty photographic trends and investigates their original appeal, their decline, and sometimes their reuse by later generations of photographers. Drawing on a wealth of visual material, from vintage how-to manuals to magazine articles for working photographers, this full-color book illustrates the evolution of trends with hundreds of pictures made by amateurs, artists, and commercial photographers alike. Whether for selfies or sepia tones, the rules for good pictures are always shifting, reflecting new ways of thinking about ourselves and our place in the visual world.
- GenresPhotographyArtNonfiction
288 pages, Paperback
Published June 23, 2020
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
August 8, 2026
Beil’s argument is a bit more sporadic and disjointed than I prefer in history of photography books, but she selected a great number of images that make an interesting narrative of photographic development
February 1, 2021
Beil explores the intersection of professional (including art) photographic practice and amateur photography through the lens (sorry) of guidebooks and how-to manuals, reaching all the way to the origins of the medium. For those familiar with the history of photography, a major portion of the book doesn't hold much in the way of new information, but in the later chapters concentrating on the changes in popular trends over the past 30 to 40 years, her observations are sharp and nuanced. An important theme that pops up throughout the book is how "mistakes" made by practitioners, often due to the constraints of the technology, such as blur, or grain, become adopted by artists and commercial envelope-pushers as stylistic tropes that eventually find their way into the popular zeitgeist. Another, although not explicitly named, is a nostalgia for older forms of the medium, often driven by reactions to current social conditions. There is a great deal in the book worthy of further development. Beil's observation of the effects of social media on the speeded up cycling of trends could easily be expanded on in ways that would contextualize popular, phone-based photography within larger trends in popular culture. Another is the way nostalgic invocations of older technologies in digital form so often take the deterioration or imperfections of those previous technologies as the core of their stylistic appropriation. Most of us who have a long history in "analog" photography wouldn't have tried to introduce inaccurate color or tonal rendition or, for that matter, celebrate dust and scratches on our negatives. More to the point, the appropriation of older "looks" in the digital filters available on cell phones seems to concentrate on how the older media looks when it has deteriorated over time, rather than how it originally looked. The fascination with markers of defects in outmoded technologies and their recreation in digital form, which totally severs the cause from the effect, is itself fascinating. The investment of new meaning in old accidents of style has, as Biel points out, a through-line from the beginning, but the confluence of social media, cell phone cameras and digital imaging have both accelerated that process and appropriated older styles not only to nostalgically evoke a non-existent past, but to compensate for defects in the new technology (see her discussion of Hipstamatic.) I imagine that next year's edition of this book will include a chapter on the stylistic appropriation of early cell phone camera defects into the newest filters.
September 21, 2021
Really great overview of photography trends. Puts into perspective that many stylistic choices and photo archetypes we see today are actually products of various types of longer term fads.
For example, the bokeh which professional photographers lust after today only even got its name in the late 1990s, whereas background blur in general became considered an artistic technique only once fully in focus pictures were available for the masses circa 1950. Fisheye lenses were popular for a couple decades mid century. Food photography was nearly not done at all until the advent of social media. Top-down shots were considered aesthetically displeasing until the last couple decades, whereas bottom-up shots were all the rage in the 1920s and 1930s.
It is very interesting to get a feel for the larger perspective that so much of our perception and appreciation of photography and art in general may be influenced by adjacent images we've seen before rather than by our own ingrained or universal sense of aesthetic.
For example, the bokeh which professional photographers lust after today only even got its name in the late 1990s, whereas background blur in general became considered an artistic technique only once fully in focus pictures were available for the masses circa 1950. Fisheye lenses were popular for a couple decades mid century. Food photography was nearly not done at all until the advent of social media. Top-down shots were considered aesthetically displeasing until the last couple decades, whereas bottom-up shots were all the rage in the 1920s and 1930s.
It is very interesting to get a feel for the larger perspective that so much of our perception and appreciation of photography and art in general may be influenced by adjacent images we've seen before rather than by our own ingrained or universal sense of aesthetic.
April 30, 2021
Fun book that was written by an ITALIC prof! Was really surprised by how much I liked it. Disclaimer: I totally skipped the first half since ancient photography wasn’t doing it for me.
Big takeaways for me:
1. Trends in photography are usually only realized after the fact. Also they are usually aided by technical innovations
2. Usually people follow trends and don’t set them. We have seen sooooo many photos in our lifetime that we are primed to see some pics as “better”. We also usually emulate a style we’ve seen before and call that a “good picture”
3. Pictures like most media was disproportionately skewed toward rich white men for a long time, and therefore their ideas of “good pictures” were often the only ones recognized in pop media although other groups were innovating
Big takeaways for me:
1. Trends in photography are usually only realized after the fact. Also they are usually aided by technical innovations
2. Usually people follow trends and don’t set them. We have seen sooooo many photos in our lifetime that we are primed to see some pics as “better”. We also usually emulate a style we’ve seen before and call that a “good picture”
3. Pictures like most media was disproportionately skewed toward rich white men for a long time, and therefore their ideas of “good pictures” were often the only ones recognized in pop media although other groups were innovating
October 4, 2022
Beil, an Art Historian at Stanford, performs a remarkable analysis, grounded in technical progress, as well as the zeitgeist of the times. The brilliant insight is that photographic trends are cyclical, reaching back in time, before fading out again.
March 9, 2021
An interesting and original approach on the history of photography.
January 21, 2022
An interesting look at the trends in photography since its inception. The number of trends that have been repeated and expanded upon are numerous.
March 21, 2022
Brilliant, well-researched book!
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews