More than just a history or a biography, Clark Worswick's ArtMachine: A Reinvention of Photography, 1959-1999 is an “insiders” view of the photography world. It has been written by a practicing photographer, who was also the founding photography curator of the oldest museum in America, and who became an important collector of photography.In his introduction to this book, the author wrote, “I began taking photographs and tried to learn the history of a neglected, beaten down, battered medium few people took seriously in the art world. I wandered a world barren of respect during decades of struggle for photography.”
“In 1959, on the planet earth, there was not a single dealer who represented a single photographer's work, because photography was not an art.” This is also a book about love and dangerous travel, and the heroic reinvention of photography in the art world. To date, few books have appeared on the texts of a working photographer’s life immersed in projects that cross years, then decades. ArtMachine: A Reinvention of Photography is the story of the long war for photography’s acceptance during the last decades of the 20th century. It was also a historic moment, and a time never to be repeated, when you could buy fabulous pictures that no one anywhere ... knew anything about.
