Geoff Batchen - Apparitions: Photography and Dissemination

Geoffrey Batchen’s book, Apparitions: Photography and Dissemination (Power Publications and NAMU, 2020), has been awarded the ‘best book’ prize for 2020 by the Art Association of Australia and New Zealand. The judges described the book as follows:

An original, convincing and extensively researched book that may change the discipline’s understanding (in art history / photography history / critical theory / museum curating) of the complex processes involved in some of the earliest forms of commercial photography. This path-breaking study challenges photography history’s existing narrative paradigm that “privileges the singular photograph” over “the reproducible photographic image”. Batchen traces the genesis of certain early portrait daguerreotypes and their ‘transfiguration’ through engraving and lithographic printing, producing ‘ghost’ images that necessitate revaluations of both vintage photographs and their reproductions. Judiciously illustrated and with a contemporary feel, this book is constructed as a visual artefact of 2019.