The Printed Picture

"I think so. It’s a catalogue of an exhibition which I saw in January at MoMA. It was about print-making and photography – the evolution of the printed object, right from early cave paintings all the way through to the most sophisticated print-making. It looks at photography and traditional print-making – etching and so on – but it treats them all as a continuous narrative. It had none of the sensationalism of many of MoMA’s big shows. It was very scholarly, discreet, small, well-illustrated show. You walked round and you needed to look and read to understand what was going on. Get the weekly Five Books newsletter Yes! You couldn’t just sit in the middle of the room. But the book’s wonderful – the physical structure of it. It’s a very sturdy book; about an inch thick, about A4 or US Legal in size. What Benson does is, he starts from the beginning and on the left he has a column of text and on the right he has one or two really beautiful pictures. He starts with cave painting, then he goes to relief printing, and under that heading he’s got wood cuts. Very accessible, very readable, beautiful. You can dip into this book anywhere. I’m opening it up now at colour carbon printing. There’s a gorgeous print of a flower on the right side and three paragraphs on the left explaining what colour carbon printing is. As a book it makes no extravagant claims. It’s quite modest and it has a real honesty to it. It’s a history of printing, but it’s also a beautiful example of what the history of printing has made possible."