Title: Toiletworthy
Review: I've read scores of books about photo history and criticism but have rarely encountered such an unbearable load of relentlessly postmodernist-deconstructionist-postcolonialist-genderbending cultural theory. Certainly there is room for such perspectives and they may provide certain insights into certain photographic subject matter. I welcome and applaud such efforts when they are well done. But please, if occasionally a cigar is just a cigar, can't the same be true of a humble photograph? Alas, no. At least not to Clarke, who sees every photo as built on a foundation of past political incorrectness, which he proceeds to survey like an archeologist examining the strata of a Pompein latrine. Viewing what purports to be the entirety of the history of photography in this monocular manner leaves us in this case with no history of photography at all...
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