Among the exhibitions organized to celebrate the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of photography, there have been two traveling blockbuster surveys with ponderous catalogues that have inevitably dominated critical attention. Yet a smaller exhibition organized at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art proved in some respects a more original approach to the subject, and it raised questions about photography as an art form that were left largely unexplored in the bigger shows. Unfortunately, the San Francisco show had no catalogue and did not travel; it thus left no permanent record of its special focus on vernacular photography.

The first of the blockbusters, “The Art of Photography, 1839–1989,” opened at Houston’s Museum of Fine Arts in February and traveled to Canberra, Australia, before arriving at the Royal Academy in London this fall. The show included many familiar masterpieces, which were a pleasure to see, but on the whole it offered few revelations. It was organized primarily by Daniel Wolf, until recently a successful New York dealer in photographs, and it reeked of the chic gallery atmosphere associated with his name. The catalogue, except for being beautifully printed, is a perfect example of what an exhibition catalogue should not be.¹ Weighing slightly over six pounds, with “photographs sequenced by Daniel Wolf” and text edited by Mike Weaver of Oxford, its content seems to have been organized for educational television and its physical production for the coffee table. The photographs flow “nicely” in little groups that are interrupted at