Roving eye

Photography has many genres, even more than painting, and most photographers achieve fame by focusing on one of them. There are technical reasons for this. Armed only with a bunch of brushes and a palette of colours, a painter can achieve a variety of effects — close-up, distance, soft or sharp focus, motion — for which a photographer needs a battery of cameras and associated paraphernalia in the form of lenses, films, lights and filters, and the technical know-how to get the best out of each.

There is also professional snobbery. Jobbing photographers who work across genres for magazine assignments are less likely to be taken seriously as artists. The distinction may be artificial (pun intended) but it exists, and it explains why New York photographer Marvin E. Newman has had to wait until the age of 89 for a monograph on his work to be published by Taschen.

‘Chicago’, 1951, by Marvin E.