[.ca] Lewis Carroll, Photographer: The Princeton University ... (ISBN 0691074437)

The Time has Come....Finally!:
I've been waiting for this very book for quite some time now. Carroll's photography has never been collected in a full form like many other photographers. Previous books have been light on material and all too heavy on the photographs of young child-friends. This book gives a more even account of Carroll's photography---even going so far as presenting the photographs as he did so in his own albums. Rather than classify his photographs, his albums show a wondrous variety of images---a skeleton of a fish, a landscape, a child-friend, a famous painter, a sculpture, etc.... Though it concentrates on Carroll's one hobby, Roger Taylor's essay is as good as any biography, being a hundred or so pages long. Edward Wakeling contributes insightful captions to each photograph in the Princeton Collection---for all are included! What more could one ask for? Wakeling, one of the leading experts on Carroll with a database of information, even offers his list of all photographs taken by Carroll, a list that will be continually updated. He even gives his email address for those who may have lost photographs. An indispensable book for the researcher and a delight for the casual photography fan.

Squeamish and out of date:
The trouble with this book is that in trying to address Carroll's photography of children it uses perspectives and arguments that were already defunct and discredited before the book went into print. The best defence pf Carroll's relationship with the nude child has been offered by Hugues Lebailly and Karoline Leach, who both have shown that we have misunderstood Carroll by failing to set him in the correct social background of his time. Basically, during the Victorian age EVERYONE as making nude studies of children, and Carroll was merely being trendy when he did the same. The mistake as been to forget this and see his actions in isolation. This revelation of the 'Victorian Cult of the Child' has revolutionised our understanding of Carroll, but Taylor in this book makes almost no use of it at all. Instead he revives very weak and illogical arguments to 'defend' Dodgson, claiming, for example, that Dodgson didn't take many nude pictures, as if this in itself precludes the suspicion of paedophilia. It doesn't. In fact it's a pale and dishonest argument. The only thing that defends Dodgson against paedophilia is the research of Leach and Lebailly which Taylor so oddly refuses to use to any extent. The result is muddled, dishonest and already out of date. For the only serious analysis of Lewis Carroll's relationship with the nude child see Leach 'In the Shadow of the Dreamchild'. But if you just want to look at nice pics, then enjoy this book.