Book Review: "Stephen Johnson on Digital Photography"
The title harkens back to "On Photography," the first of Susan Sontag's two book-length philosophical meditations about the role of photography in society. Like Sontag, Johnson has a well defined philosophical stance about the subject. The difference is that Johnson comes at the subject from the view of someone who is a maker and not a consumer of photographs.
"Stephen Johnson on Digital Photography" (O'Reilly Media, $39.99) begins with a brief history of the origins of digital photography and then zooms through the rapid evolution of technologies and techniques over the past 20 years, much of which the author was deeply engaged with. Johnson makes an eloquent plea for the sanctity of straight photography in photography's digital era, and rightly points out that if we compare it to the evolution of mankind, electronic photography is still in its Stone Age period.