Gerry Badger

File:Gerry Badger (Bristol Photobook Festival, 2014).jpg

Gerry Badger, 2014

Gerald David "Gerry" Badger (born 1948 in Northampton) is an English writer about and curator of photography, and a photographer.

Life and career

Badger studied architecture at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art (Dundee), graduating with a diploma in 1969.

Badger is the author of a number of books on photography.

The two volumes then published of The Photobook: A History, which Badger co-wrote with Martin Parr, won the 2006 book award for photography from the Kraszna-Krausz Foundation. The second volume won a Deutscher Fotobuchpreis (German Photobook Prize). His book The Pleasures of Good Photographs won the International Center for Photography's Infinity Award, Writing category, in 2011.

As a photographer, Badger identifies his usual subject matter as "landscapes and accretions of history".

Exhibitions

Solo exhibitions

• "Gerry Badger". Blue Sky Gallery, Portland, OR.

Group exhibitions

• Photographers' Gallery, London, 1975.
• "British Art, 1940–1980", Hayward Gallery, London, 1980.
• "Towards a Bigger Picture", Victoria and Albert Museum, London, and Tate Gallery, Liverpool, 1988–1989.
• "The Art of the Garden", Tate Britain, London, 2004.
• "Unpopular Culture: Grayson Perry Selects from the Arts Council Collection", De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill-on-Sea, 2008 (and travelling).

Exhibitions curated

• "The Photographer as Printmaker", for the Arts Council of Great Britain, Photographers' Gallery, London, 1980.
• "Through the Looking Glass: Photographic Art in Britain 1945–1989", Barbican Arts Centre, London, 1989 (with John Benton-Harris).

Collections

• Arts Council, London
• Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris
• Victoria and Albert Museum, London
• The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY
• The Portland Art Museum, Portland, OR

Books

• Photographer as Printmaker: 140 Years of Photographic Printmaking. London: Arts Council of Great Britain and Northampton, England: Belmont Press, 1981. ISBN 0-7287-0294-0.
• Eugène Atget. London: Macdonald, 1985. ISBN 0-356-10852-X. The work of Eugène Atget.
• Photo Texts. London: Travelling Light, 1988. ISBN 0-906333-22-9. Essays by Badger and Peter Turner.
• Through the Looking Glass: Photographic art in Britain 1945–1989. London: Barbican Art Gallery, 1989. ISBN 0-85331-560-4. Coedited by Badger and John Benton-Harris.
• Chris Killip 55. London: Phaidon, 2001. ISBN 0-7148-4028-9. On Chris Killip.
• Eugène Atget 55. London: Phaidon, 2001. ISBN 0-7148-4049-1. On Eugène Atget.
• Collecting Photography. London: Mitchell Beazley, 2003. ISBN 1-84000-726-5.
• The Photobook: A History Volume I. London: Phaidon, 2004. ISBN 0-7148-4285-0. With Martin Parr.
• The Photobook: A History Volume II. London: Phaidon, 2006. ISBN 0-7148-4433-0. With Martin Parr.
• The Genius of Photography. London: Quadrille, 2007. ISBN 1-84400-363-9.
• The Pleasures of Good Photographs: Essays. New York: Aperture, 2010. ISBN 978-1-59711-139-3.
• The Photobook: A History Volume III. London: Phaidon, 2014. ISBN 978-0-714866-77-2. With Martin Parr.

Photographs in books

• Through the Looking Glass: Photographic art in Britain 1945–1989. London: Barbican Art Gallery, 1989. ISBN 0-85331-560-4. Coedited by Badger and John Benton-Harris.
• Unpopular Culture: Grayson Perry Selects from the Arts Council Collection. London: Hayward, 2008. ISBN 1-85332-267-9. Edited by Grayson Perry.
• One Day: 10 Photographers. Heidelberg, Germany: Kehrer, 2011. ISBN 978-3-86828-173-6. A boxed set, edited by Harvey Benge, of ten books of photographs taken on 20 June 2010, each book by one of Badger, Jessica Backhaus, Benge, John Gossage, Todd Hido, Rob Hornstra, Rinko Kawauchi, Eva Maria Ocherbauer, Martin Parr and Alec Soth.

Contributed texts

• A Short History of Photography by Harvey Benge. Stockport: Dewi Lewis, 2008. ISBN 1-904587-51-8. Introduction by Gerry Badger.
• Photography, Vol. 2, A New Vision of the World, 1891 - 1940. Milan: Skira, 2012. ISBN 9788857210322. Texts by Gerry Badger, Clément Chéroux, Sandra S. Phillips, Ulrich Pohlmann and Francesco Zanot.
• The Chinese Photobook. New York: Aperture, 2015. ISBN 978-1597112284. By Martin Parr and WassinkLundgren. Texts by Gerry Badger, Gu Zheng, Stephanie Tung, Raymund Lum and Ruben Lundgren.

External links

• Official website