Historian, critic, architect and photographer Gerry Badger is the author of the renownedCollecting Photography (2003) and numerous photography monographs. He has worked with Martin Parr for the past ten years on what has become a reference work in photobooks with over 700 titles compiled for the full trilogy. To mark the release of the third volume in the trilogy,Photobooks: A History (Phaidon), we wanted to revisit the origin of this ambitious project. During a signing at Le Bal last Saturday, we asked Gerry Badger to speak with us about his collaboration with the British photographer.
It was Martin Parr who first had the idea to write a history of the photobook. Badger, also a collector of photo books, examined one by one the books scattered across the floor of Parr’s Bristol home. The two friends spent hours discussing the books they wanted to include. This time, “things were different,” he says, because of all the titles that didn’t fit into previous volumes. Then they had to make a decision. “We both had five books that we really wanted to see in the catalogue. The debate was long, but despite a few disagreements, the result was always a joint decision.”
Read the full article on the French version of L’Oeil.
