When the news of the invention of the daguerreotype left the halls of the French Academy of Sciences in 1839, it fell on the ears of an eager and receptive public, spellbound by the miracle of such an invention. The rapid popularization of the daguerreotype, and subsequently, of less time-consuming photographic processes, forced critics and artists alike to vehemently defend a definition of art that either categorically excluded the new medium or open-mindedly included it within the ranks of a modern (...) or industrialized art. If one maintained, as many did, that the nature and essence of art/literature can be clearly defined and that this definition must be grounded in tradition, coming to terms with what photography was and where it rightfully belonged required either a staunch reaffirmation of one's beliefs about aesthetics or a reassessment of those beliefs. In either case, photography functioned as a disruptive element that did not cause but contributed to an (already existing) artistic movement in which the integrity and solidity of aesthetic definitions and orthodoxies were being questioned and tested. In the minds of those apprehensive and suspicious of the new medium, industrialization, as well as political and social change, had already begun to sound the death knell for art as it had traditionally been conceived. If art/literature had become contaminated by industry, technological advancement and democratic principles, the conservative French nineteenth-century thinker saw it as his duty to save the former from certain destruction. “Saving” art/literature required a fundamental reinforcement of the belief in the closure and soundness of aesthetic definitions whose truth tradition had supposedly guaranteed. Uncovering the presuppositions behind aesthetic definitions that claim to speak in the name of tradition, self-evident truths, and even the nature of man is an endeavor worth pursuing because this manner of thinking leads to a kind of tyranny that has as its goal the suppression of questions, critical inquiry and thus, independent thinking. This study seeks to examine a small part of French aesthetic theory during a period in which change, instability and revolution became almost commonplace. The reactions of conservative artists and critics to post 1840s literary and artistic practices will be scrutinized in order to unveil the deep-seated fears and beliefs that found conservative backlashes to that which is referred to as “new” or “progressive.”. (shrink)

Media philosopher Vilém Flusser proposed a revolutionary new way of thinking about photography.

Unlike the numerous texts devoted to the subject of Film Theory, this collection contains essays specifically about the art form of Still Photography and the ...

Within the last decade, a growing number of artists, media activists and theorists have been engaged with the potential of the glitch – with processes and aesthetics that arise from visual errors in digital technologies. But glitches also offer clues to understanding normative knowledge and power systems, and to challenge these. This is relevant in critical approaches to photography and its historical role in forming, controlling and colonizing systems as well as conventional understandings of the medium as a transparent window (...) onto the world/reality. In this introduction we outline our approach to the glitch in the artistic and curatorial research project ‘Photography and the Glitch’, to which the contributors to this issue have contributed in various ways. (shrink)

English summary: The authors invited eighteen artists and theorists to reflect on what is meant by contemporary photography and contemporary art. Historical issues or paradigmatic problems? The articulation of these eighteen points of view, sometimes radically different, can have a fruitful view on issues, concepts, assumptions, and current issues on the subject. French text. French description: Francois Soulages et Marc Tamisier ont invite dix-huit artistes et theoriciens a reflechir sur ce qu'ils entendent par photographie contemporaine et par art contemporain. Questions (...) historiques ou bien problemes paradigmatiques? L'articulation de ces dix-huit points de vue, parfois radicalement differents, permet d'avoir un panorama fecond sur les problematiques, concepts, presupposes et enjeux actuels sur le sujet. L'enjeu premier serait-il l'" art-contemporain " qui ne se reduirait pas alors a l'art qui serait contemporain. Que serait, alors, la " photographie-contemporaine " a l'ere du numerique? L'enjeu ultime est bien le/notre contemporain! (shrink)

This book analyzes recent artistic and activist projects in order to conceptualize the new roles and goals of a critical theory and practice of art and photography. Vered Maimon argues that current artistic and activist practices are no longer concerned with the "politics of representation" and the critique of the spectacle, but with a "politics of rights" and the performative formation of shared yet highly contested public domains. The book thus offers a critical framework in which to rethink (...) the artistic, the activist, and the political under globalization. The primary focus is on the ways contemporary artists and activists examine political citizenship as a paradox where subjects are struggling to acquire rights whose formulation rests on attributes they allegedly don't have; while the universal political validity of these rights presupposes precisely the abstraction of every form of difference, rights for all. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, contemporary art, photography theory, visual culture, cultural studies, critical theory, political theory, human rights, and activism. (shrink)

Even as art theory and analytic philosophy have failed to connect in their studies of photography, the two disciplines have joined in tying conceptions of the specific character of photography to ideas about automaticity and agency.1 In rough caricature, the philosopher reasons: “An item is a work of art only insofar as it is the product of agency, so a photograph is not an art work insofar it is not the product of artistic agency. After all, in Lady Eastlake's (...) colorful words, the ‘obedience of the machine’ in photography is no ‘picturesque agent.’”2 This much is accepted both by philosophers who go on to conclude that photography is not an art and also by those who defend the contrary.3 The reasoning on the side of theory and criticism often goes, again in caricature, as follows: “Art works sometimes result from a suppression of agency, and the distinctive ‘obedience of the machine’ in photography is no ‘picturesque agent,’ so the automatism of the photographic machine shapes the distinctive profile of photographic art.” The triadic assemblage of the medium, automatism, and agency is clearly more than a trope in writing on photography; it regulates and structures reasoning about photography, even as it sends that reasoning off in remarkably divergent directions in different disciplines. In the spirit of the nudge towards convergence that this special issue represents, this afterword develops some thoughts that are sparked by and that offer a friendly challenge to the preceding papers. In brief, the triad that controls thinking about photography across disciplines depends on some rather demanding conceptions of agency and automatism. As it turns out, less demanding conceptions of agency and automatism pave the way to a new and more modest conception of the specificity of photography as an art medium. If our common ground is what keeps us apart, perhaps we should find some new common ground? (shrink)

The forty-five women who created these works-artists and writers such as Deborah Willis, Carrie Mae Weems, Nan Goldin, and Carm Little Turtle-are connected by a belief that images are political and that today's feminist concerns cannot be ...

La photographie, dès sa naissance, entretint des relations tout à la fois difficiles et opaques avec l’art. En France notamment, et cela jusqu’à l’aube du xxe siècle, nombre d’écrivains et artistes se liguèrent pour affirmer qu’entre les deux, seuls prévalaient des rapports de subordination de la première au second. L’intérêt et la possible reconnaissance de la photographie en tant qu’art ne se manifesta donc qu’assez tardivement, une fois marginalisées les productions du premier « pictorialisme » visant à aligner l’esthétique du (...) nouveau médium sur celle de la peinture. Au cours de la première moitié du xxe siècle, en partie grâce au surréalisme, la photographie entra progressivement dans le champ de l’art avant qu’au cours des années 1970, un emballement se produise, autorisant des légitimations rétrospectives rehaussées de justifications théoriques et esthétiques. L’entrée en scène du numérique contribua à l’accélération de ce mouvement de fusion – absorption par l’art contemporain, dont il n’est pas inutile de se demander s’il n’est pas une autre manière de soumettre la photographie à une identité rétrécie et réductrice. (shrink)

Photography matters, writes Jerry Thompson, because of how it works -- not only as an artistic medium but also as a way of knowing. It matters because how we understand what photography is and how it works tell us something about how we understand anything. With these provocative observations, Thompson begins a wide-ranging and lucid meditation on why photography is unique among the picture-making arts. Thompson, a working photographer for forty years, constructs an argument that moves with natural logic (...) from Thomas Pynchon to Jonathan Swift to Plato to Emily Dickinson to detailed readings of photographs by Eugène Atget, Garry Winogrand, Marcia Due, Walker Evans, and Robert Frank. He questions Susan Sontag's assertion in On Photography that "nobody" can any longer imagine literate, authoritative, or transcendent photographs. He considers the money-fueled expansion of the market for photography, and he compares ambitious "meant-for-the-wall" photographs with smaller, quieter works. Forcefully and persuasively, Thompson argues for photography as a medium concerned with understanding the world we live in -- a medium whose business is not constructing fantasies pleasing to the eye or imagination but describing the world in the toughest and deepest way. (shrink)

"Photography and travel go hand in hand-landmarks and scenic vistas everywhere are thronged by tourists with their eye to the view finder, trying to capture their memories on film or in megapixel. When the pioneers of photography, Henry Fox Talbot and Louise Daguerre, made their inventions public in 1839, advocates for the new technology immediately recognized photography's capability to vividly present the spectacles of the world and make famous sights accessible to those unable to experience them in person. In this (...) lively account of the partnership between photography and travel, Graham Smith explores the diverse ways mobility and cameras have been partnered from the mid-nineteenth century to today. His subjects range from seaside holidaymakers with a Kodak Brownie to American artists on the road exploring their own country and culture, to the canals of Venice and men on the moon. From France and Italy, to Egypt, Japan, and North America, we see how photography was both influenced and encouraged by new forms of transcontinental travel, including railways, cars, ships, and planes. Then as now, photographers often went to great lengths and faced considerable dangers to record exotic destinations, from the summit of the Great Pyramid of Giza to that of Mount Everest. As travel has become more democratized, the methods and experiences of it have developed in unexpected directions to create new photographic narratives. Packed with images from around the globe, Photography and Travel is the perfect book for intrepid photographers and armchair travellers alike"--Jacket. (shrink)

Draws upon Taoist wisdom and photographic artistry to provide insight into creativity, spirituality, and awareness training, with black-and-white photographs, passages from ancient Taoist writings, and practical exercises to explain the fundamentals of Taoist photography.

From as early as 1839, artists began exploring photography's enormous potential for storytelling and often went to great lengths to create pictures for the camera.

I argue that authentic photography is not able to develop to the full as a communicative representational art. Photography is authentic when it is true to its self-image as the imprinting of images. For an image to be imprinted is for its content to be linked to the scene in which it originates by a chain of sufficient, mind-independent causes. Communicative representational art (in any medium: photography, painting, literature, music, etc.) is art that exploits the resources of representation to achieve (...) artistically interesting communication of thought. The central resources of representation are content, vehicle properties, and the interplay between these two. Whereas painting and other representational arts are able to exploit all three to communicate thought, authentic photography can exploit interplay only to a very limited degree. However, the exploitation of interplay is the culmination of communicative representational art: the natural endpoint in its development. (shrink)

Egypt immediately conjures images of the pyramids, the temples, and the Sphinx in the desert. Early photographs of Egypt took these ancient monuments as their primary subjects, and these have remained hugely influential in constructing our view of the country. But while Egypt and its monuments have been regularly photographed by foreigners, little is known about the early days of photography among Egyptians. Photography and Egypt examines both, considering a wide range of images from the mid-nineteenth century to the present (...) day, including studio portraits, landscapes, and photojournalism. Two forces drove photography’s early development in Egypt: its use as an essential tool of archaeology and the accelerating effects of archaeological photographs on the burgeoning tourism industry. In this richly illustrated book, Maria Golia examines these twin drives, while looking closely at the work of early Egyptian photographers such as Colonel Mohammed Sadiq, Mohammed Badr, and Atiyya Gaddis, many of whom have never before been studied. Golia examines how photography was also employed for propaganda purposes, including depictions of celebrated soldiers, workers, and farmers; and how studio-based photography was used to portray the growing Egyptian middle class. Today’s young photographic artists, Golia reveals, use the medium both to celebrate everyday life and to indict the political and social conditions that contribute to their hardship, with photography bearing witness to this history—as well as helping to shape it. (shrink)

Gustave Le Gray was one of the most technically accomplished and aesthetically enlightened of the early "artist-photographers." Trained as a painter of portraits and landscapes, Le Gray was attracted in the 1840s to the artistic potential of photographic processes. As a photographer he evolved and refined much of photography's primary aesthetic theory. By 1855 he had influenced, if not taught, every important photographer in France. Drawing on entirely new material Eugenia Parry Janis fully analyzes the life and work of (...) Le Gray and demonstrates the originality of his artistic achievement in the context of discoveries about his personal and professional history. Janis, approaching the photographs of Le Gray with the methods and sensibilities of an art historian, reveals telling connections between Le Gray's choices of subject matter and formal means of presentation and the existing pictorial practice of other media such as painting. This same approach makes her sensitive to Le Gray's departures from such traditional practice, and she skillfully illustrates how he evolved from student painter into master photographer. In doing so she gives us a glimpse of the way in which Le Gray's manipulation of the photographic process was always informed by his pictorial needs and by his developing style. (shrink)

This article examines a strain of contemporary art photography marked by its resemblance to earlier scientific motion studies as indicative of a wider `scientific turn' in recent photographic art. Focusing on Sarah Pickering's series Explosions , Denis Darzacq's The Fall , Ori Gersht's Blow Up and Martin Klimas' Flower Vases , it addresses the conditions that have allowed for forms and methodologies associable with earlier scientific imagery to be reshaped as contemporary art, particularly the large-scale of recent `museum photography' and (...) its self-conscious indeterminacy of meaning. Adopting a schematic approach based on the identification of similarity, I examine the implications of ambiguity and scale as inherent qualities of the work, along with the interpretations that the projects examined share. Noting a potential formalism in artists' repeated isolation of frozen motion, I anchor this interest in the medium-specific qualities of photography in two changes associated with digitization. Where digital post-production has placed pressure on traditional ontological understandings of the medium, the projects are shown to offer a nostalgic return to `purer' forms of photographic production. Drawing on Fredric Jameson's 2003 essay, `The end of temporality', I conclude by considering how the photographs may be implicated in wider transformations to the construction and experience of time under late-capitalism. (shrink)

Of the generation of post-1960s artists who looked to photography for a new set of conceptual tools, Gerhard Richter stands apart because he has uniquely professed a desire to “use painting as a means to photography,” that is, to bring painting to the structure and sensibility of the photograph.2 To ascribe sensibility or perceptive acuity to a process so mechanical as photography may strike the reader as either romantically fey or even offensively anthropomorphizing, given that the aesthetic questions at stake (...) have exactly to do with philosophy's “mind-independent” designation of the medium. But the metaphor has pedigree among historians of photography, having been articulated by Walter Benjamin in his “Little History of Photography,” where he characterizes photography as a medium possessed of an “optical unconscious,” a nature specifically “other” in its ability to present the “spark of contingency, of the here and now, with which reality has seared the subject.”3 It is precisely on the basis of this picture making outside of human agency, Benjamin insists, that “the dubious project of authenticating photography in terms of painting” fails, for it is an attempt to “legitimize the photographer before the very tribunal he was in the process of overturning.”4 Certainly, it is from this premise of photography's revolutionary capacity that the first critical assessments of the work of “artists using photography” proceeded in the 1970s and continued through the 1980s into the present decade.5 This is particularly important to keep in mind when assessing what has been called the recent turn to the pictorial in photographic practices because this move has been accompanied by, on one hand, a general pulling away from easily legible, unambivalent documentary content in photographic practices—a tendency that may itself be considered part of a quietly growing, renewed interest in the critical capacity of painting among a new generation of artists—and, on the other, a nuanced exploration of the appropriative lessons of postmodernism, manifested in recent interest in the repurposing of found, or what Benjamin might call “other-determined,” imagery.6. (shrink)

The essays collected in this special issue of Critical Inquiry are devoted to reflection on the shifts in photographically based art practice, exhibition, and reception in recent years and to the changes brought about by these shifts in our understanding of photographic art. Although initiated in the 1960s, photography as a mainstream artistic practice has accelerated over the last two decades. No longer confined to specialist galleries, books, journals, and other distribution networks, contemporary art photographers are now regularly the (...) subject of major retrospectives in mainstream fine-art museums on the same terms as any other artist. One could cite, for example, Thomas Struth at the Metropolitan Museum in New York , Thomas Demand at the Museum of Modern Art , or Jeff Wall at Tate Modern and MoMA . Indeed, Wall's most recent museum show, at the time of writing, The Crooked Path at Bozar, Brussels , situated his photography in relation to the work of a range of contemporary photographers, painters, sculptors, performance artists, and filmmakers with whose work Wall considers his own to be in dialogue, irrespective of differences of media. All this goes to show that photographic art is no longer regarded as a subgenre apart. The situation in the United Kingdom is perhaps emblematic of both photography's increasing prominence and its increased centrality in the contemporary art world over recent years. Tate hosted its first ever photography survey, Cruel and Tender, as recently as 2003, and since then photography surveys have become a regular biannual staple of its exhibition programming, culminating in the appointment of Tate's first dedicated curator of photography in 2010. A major shift in the perception of photography as art is clearly well under way. (shrink)

The author explores the role of Boston in the evolution of modern photography, examining the institutions, corporations, and artists who shaped the scene in that city in the last half of the twentieth century.

With its lush and diverse landscapes, ancient ruins, and stunning architecture, China is a photographer’s dream. Exploring this visually rich and evocative country, Photography and China highlights Chinese photographers and subjects from the inception of photography to the present day. Drawing on works in museums, and archival and private collections across China, the United States, Europe, and Australia, Claire Roberts locates images from commercial, art, and documentary photography within the broader context of Chinese history. She focuses on the images as (...) well as the studios and individuals who created them, describing the long tradition of Chinese artistic culture into which photography was first absorbed and subsequently expanded. As she recounts the stories of practitioners—from China and overseas—who were agents in that process of change, she also examines the commercial, political, and artistic purposes for which they used photography. Featuring one hundred striking, little-known images, Photography and China will make a significant contribution to photography, Chinese art, and twentieth-century history. (shrink)

This article examines recent practices of landscape photography in light of Henri Lefebvre's influential theorisation of the production of space. The abiding value of Lefebvre's analysis for our understanding of social geography and contemporary Capitalism is elaborated through discussion of selected photographic works that, in different ways, each foreground the socio-hisotrically constructed character of space. This analysis enables the rearticulation of Lefebvre's influential analysis of space in light of later artistic practices and in relation to subsequent developments in the (...) form of Capitalism. (shrink)

How does a coloured bird end up on a TUGboat? This is the story of an artist who studied philosophy and combined her skills in a PhD at the University of Amsterdam (NL). In order to write her dissertation, she had to learn the LaTeX typesetting programme. Many years later, she still makes art and still writes down her thoughts in LaTeX, with the Memoir class and XeLaTeX as first choice. Always trying to stretch the limits of the programme to (...) her convenience. -/- This essay is not a technical article written by a developer conjuring up ingenious innovations to the LaTeX programme. By contrast, it discusses the relationship between LaTeX, art (photography) and the concept of 'measurability' from the perspective of a philosophising artist. (shrink)

This article addresses the portrait as a philosophical form of art. Portraits seek to render the subjective objectively visible. In portraiture two fundamental aims come into conflict: the revelatory aim of faithfulness to the subject, and the creative aim of artistic expression. In the first part of my paper, studying works by Rembrandt, I develop a typology of four different things that can be meant when speaking of an image’s power to show a person: accuracy, testimony of presence, emotional (...) characterization, or revelation of the essential “air” (to use Roland Barthes’ term). In the second half of my paper this typology is applied to examples from painting and photography to explore how the two media might differ. I argue that, despite photography’s alleged ‘realism’ and ‘transparency,’ it allows for artistic portraiture and presents the same basic conflict between portraiture’s two aims, the revelatory and the expressive. (shrink)

In parallel it looks at the cinematic in the work of photographers and artists that include Germaine Krull, William Klein, John Baldessari, Jeff Wall, Victor Burgin and Cindy Sherman.

The present essay represents for the author an occasion to retrace his philosophy of art, referring in particular to the themes related to contemporary art. Starting from the historical importance which the photographic experiments of Eadweard Muybridge had for painting (and not only), Arthur Danto once again comes to wonder about the famous Brillo Box of Andy Warhol, demonstrating how, in the face of different avant-guard artistic movements of the early Sixties (specially in the usa), it is indeed philosophy (...) that questions itself, reconsidering its own concept of the eternity of art and the way in which works of art must be interpreted. (shrink)

Images are double agents. They receive information from the world, while also projecting visual imagination onto the world. As a result, mind and world tug our thinking about images, or particular kinds of images, in contrary directions. On one common division, world traces itself mechanically in photographs, whereas mind expresses itself through painting.1 Scholars of photography disavow such crude distinctions: much recent writing attends in detail to the materials and processes of photography, the agency of photographic artists, and the social (...) determinants of the production and reception of photographs. As such writing makes plain, photographs cannot be reduced to mechanical traces.2 Yet background conceptions of photography as trace or index persist almost by default, as no framework of comparable explanatory power has yet emerged to replace them. A conception of photography adequate to developments in recent scholarship is long overdue. Rather than constructing such a conception top-down, as philosophers are wont to do, this paper articulates it by examining selected works by James Welling.3 There are several reasons for this: Welling’s practice persistently explores the resources and possibilities of photography, the effect of these explorations is to express a particular metaphysics of the mind’s relation to its world, and appreciating why this metaphysics is aptly expressed by exploring photography requires a revised conception of what photography is. In as much as it provides a framework for a richer interpretation of Welling, the new conception is also capable of underwriting a wide range of critical and historical approaches to photography. (shrink)

This book covers composition, exposure, fill-flash, special creative techniques, and more. Plus, assignments at the end of each chapter sharpen your skills to for taking unique, artistic nature photographs.

Pictures that are made, not taken, are the focus of this exciting collection of worksby 90 American artists who are using appropriation, computer technology, performance, and numerousother sources of inspiration to stretch the limits and expand the possibilities of photographicart.

When a theorist of my persuasion looks at photography he is more concerned with the character traits of the medium as such than with the particular work of particular artists. He wishes to know what human needs are fulfilled by this kind of imagery, and what properties enable the medium to fulfill them. For his purpose, the theorist takes the medium at its best behavior. The promise of its potentialities captures him more thoroughly than the record of its actual achievements, (...) and this makes him optimistic and tolerant, as one is with a child, who has a right to demand credit for his future. Analyzing media in this way requires a very different temperament than analyzing the use people make of them. Studies of this latter kind, given the deplorable state of our civilization, often make a depressing reading. Among Rudolf Arnheim's latest publications are Toward a Psychology of Art, Visual Thinking, and Entropy and Art. A new version of Art and Visual Perception: A Psychology of the Creative Eye, will appear this fall. He is professor of the psychology of art, emeritus, at the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Harvard University. Other contributions to Critical Inquiry are "A Stricture on Space and Time" and "THE LANGUAGE OF IMAGES: A Plea for Visual Thinking". (shrink)

The amateur photographer used to be defined as a photography enthusiast or a "photographer of everyday life". Since the 19 th century, he has liked to join photo clubs, where he improves his technical skills. Has his position changed fundamentally in the 20 th and 21 st century? What impact does the growth of the Internet and smartphones have on the amateur photography? And how has the world of art responded to the increase of number as well as visibitity of (...) amateur photographs? In our contribution, we will also look at erasing boundaries between amateur, professional and artistic photography through concrete examples. (shrink)

Essai sur la lecture du monde par la philosophie, à la lumière de la pensée de Martin Heidegger et Günther Anders, à travers des commentaires et réflexions suscitées par des images du photographe M. Koch. Electre 2018.

For students of photography who were born in the digital era, publications and magazines about photography are no longer the reference sources of information, but it is the social platform Instagram. There, they are looking not only for current aesthetic trends, but they also actively use Instagram in their art projects. Lev Manovich calls this modern phenomenon Instagramism. In our paper we look at the basic features of his aesthetics. Than, we will compare how established artists such as Cindy Sherman, (...) Richard Prince and Czech photographer Libuse Jarcovjakova work with Instagram and in which ways their approach is different from the co-called Instagrammers. (shrink)

The ubiquity of camera phones today has made us all photographers, and as these nano-devices attest, the history of photography, perhaps more so than any other art, is also a history of technology, one best revealed in the very vehicle that makes it possible—the camera. Through brief, illustrated chapters on fifty landmark cameras and the photographers who used them, Michael Pritchard offers an entertaining look at photography as practiced by professionals, artists, and amateurs. A History of Photography in Fifty Cameras (...) is organized chronologically, beginning with William Henry Fox Talbot’s wooden “Mousetrap” camera of 1835. Other entries include the Brownie, the Coronet Midget, the Kodak Instamatic 100, and, of course, the Polaroid SX-70. Photographs within each chapter show not only the cameras themselves but also samples of the images made with them. Pritchard uses each camera as a point of entry for talking about the people who used them and the kind of photos they produced, from Weegee and his Speed Graphic to Cartier-Bresson and the Leica’s role in the invention of photojournalism. In the hands of individual photographers, he reveals, cameras came to represent unique styles of depiction. Together, the stories of the fifty cameras gathered here present an approachable and informative take on a medium that continues to fire the imagination, whether we’re perfecting the selfie or longing for the days of Fotomat. (shrink)

I would like to set aside, for now, the distinction between art and art with a capital A because this distinction may not exist, except as a polemical tool or an expression of personal opinion.Fifteen years ago, in “Marks of Indifference” I proposed that it was the dialectic of negation in which conceptual art implicated photography that paradoxically breached the final, most subtle, barriers to the acceptance of photography as art.That implied, I think, that photography played some central role in (...) the elaboration of conceptual art, what I am going to call the conceptual reduction of autonomous art. I don't know whether I meant to imply that or not, but, if I did, I shouldn't have because photography had nothing to do with the success of conceptual art; photography played no significant role in it. Photography was a sort of passenger on that trip. We can put it even more strongly and say that the very presence of photographs in works or discourse distracted or diminished the logic of the arguments conceptual artists were making.The most rigorous conceptual artists had little or nothing to do with photography because they had no need for it and recognized that, as depiction, it could contribute nothing to the reduction they were seeking to establish. (shrink)

Streets have always drawn the attention of photographers. As both defining features of urban landscapes and places for all varieties of chance encounter, they offer a nearly endless combination of static and moving elements that are the stuff of stunning photography--as the photographers in Road Atlas show brilliantly. From classic New York City street scenes by Helen Levitt to the works of the more contemporary street photographers, including, among others, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Beat Streuli, and Pieter Hugo, Road Atlas presents a (...) survey of the very best of street photography. Captured here is the everyday bustle of streets, sidewalks, and alleyways from Tokyo to São Paulo and beyond, offering tantalizing glimpses of buildings and their inhabitants, people immersed in their daily activities--shedding light, in the process, on poverty and prosperity, stagnation and vanishing urban spaces, and sometimes even of radical change. Through the practiced eyes of the twenty-eight artists showcased here, streets are threads linking cities and bringing people together yet also tokens of the distances that separate them and consign them to solitude. With more than 100 photographs from the renowned DZ Bank art collection in Frankfurt, Road Atlas captures both the oft-overlooked moments of everyday life and the distinctive character of cities worldwide. It accompanies an exhibition that will also be shown at the Opelvillen Rüsselsheim and the Kunstmuseum Dieselkraftwerk Cottbus. (shrink)

Catalog of an exhibition held Nov. 4, 2010-Oct. 9, 2011, at the American Folk Art Museum, New York.

What makes a photograph an artwork, as opposed to a mere document? I defend a cluster account such that aesthetic value, aptness to interpretation, the artist’s intention and institutional uptake may contribute to the arthood of a body of photographs, with no single condition being necessary. With regard to Lawler’s works, I suggest that Lawler’s intention that they be art plays a definitive role because of the works’ resemblance to non-art photography. For some of her photographs, however, it appears that (...) such an intention is absent; and if this is correct, then, given their other features, those photographs are not artworks. (shrink)

This article examines the consequences for the res publica of the simultaneous increase in state surveillance and the restriction of the right to take photographs in public ushered in by the War on Terror. We draw on Ariella Azoulay's theorization of what she terms the civil contract of photography, or the possibility for non-state civic interaction allowed by the invention of the camera. While Michel Foucault's studies of the role of constant surveillance in disciplinary societies help us to understand our (...) increasingly panoptical public spaces, Azoulay also draws on Giorgio Agamben's theorization of the state of exception, which enables us to better understand the restriction of established rights, including the right to take photographs, in the post-9/11 context. The article asks whether these developments signify an attempt to monopolize the decision as to who constitutes the citizenry of photography, and also considers artistic and political responses to surveillance and photography restrictions in Australia and the United Kingdom. (shrink)

In his text, `Information strategies', written at the cusp of the emergence of digital photography in 1985, German artist and photography critic Andreas Müller-Pohle predicted that soon `it will be possible to generate and regenerate literally every conceivable - or inconceivable - picture through a computer terminal'. This realization coincided with Müller-Pohle's critique of conventional photography, which he dubbed `photographism' drawing on the philosopher Vilém Flusser's work. For Flusser, photographers are functionaries of an apparatus based on automation, programmed to produce (...) of pictures that correspond to certain general conventions and reconstructing the world as technical information. According to Flusser, the bulk of photography is `redundant', exhausting itself stylistically and enslaved to apparatuses and programs. This paper revisits the ideas of Flusser and Müller-Pohle in light of developments in digital photography that throw new light on the idea of image saturation and redundant photography. In particular, I address cultures of online photo sharing in light of the actions enabled by the metadata contained within common digital file formats. I propose that the very excess of digital photographic images coincides with the reinvention of the embattled authorial image into an evolving collaboration between the photographer and the database. (shrink)

Let your motto become "What would happen if...?" Infrared light offers photographers another artistic avenue to explore. You don't need years of experience or expensive equipment. Just grab an IR filter or a converted digital camera, and you're ready to enter the fascinating world of infrared photography. The unique effects you can create with IR photography are limited only by your imagination. In these pages, you'll discover the practical information about file formats and composition as well as plenty of (...) creative inspiration. Discover whether your camera can detect infrared light and compare different IR filters Learn how to see in IR and master IR composition Play with effects — extended exposures, shooting through glass, zooming, and painting with light Explore HDR and Photomerge options Open more creative possibilities with Photoshop. (shrink)

Werner Schuster was a doctor long before he became an artist--but it was a childhood fascination with photography that drove him to study radiology in the first place, so it's only fitting that he should now be one of the most versatile and interesting artists working with x-ray photography today. This volume presents full-color reproductions of Schuster's photographs along with those of other photographers, from the pioneering x-ray creators of 1895 to present-day artists working in the medium. An essay by (...) René Harather tells the history of x-ray photography and highlights the most important developments and proponents of the genre since its discovery. The second part of the book turns to Schuster's work, showing how he has expanded the boundaries of the medium and made creative use of the interplay between traditional and x-ray photography. A fascinating look at a stunning marriage of art and science, X-Ray is the first comprehensive representation of the history of x-ray photography. (shrink)

Born like Venus on the half shell from the centuries-long tradition of the nude in painting, the nude first appeared as a subject matter in photography with the introduction of the medium itself, between 1837 and 1840, and has continued as an ever-evolving theme through changing technical developments and cultural mores to the present day. This volume surveys the subject of nudity from the earliest surviving photographs of Greek and Roman sculpture through studies of living nude models for aesthetic or (...) scientific purposes to the burgeoning practice of exploring the human body as pure form. The seventy-eight works, selected from the extensive collection of the J. Paul Getty Museum and further contextualized here in the essay “Masterworks of the Nude,” span the entire arc of the history of photography in a manner that is both fresh and illuminating. Among the sixty-four photographers included are nineteenth-century masters Julia Margaret Cameron, Edgar Degas, and Thomas Eakins; early-twentieth-century artists Man Ray, Alfred Stieglitz, and Edward Weston; mid-twentieth-century innovators Bill Brandt, Harry Callahan, and Minor White; late-twentieth-century image makers Diane Arbus, Robert Mapplethorpe, and Herb Ritts; and contemporary artists Chuck Close, Timothy Greenfield-Sanders, and Mona Kuhn. (shrink)

Take your best shots with this invaluable guide to composition for DSLR cameras Sometimes you get the best results by breaking the rules, but first you have to know what the rules are! In this indispensable photography guide, renowned photographer Harold Davis first walks you through the recommended guidelines for composing great shots with your DSLR camera-and then shows you how to break free, build your own unique style, and compose beautiful images with confidence. Provides practical composition basics as well (...) as the artistic tips and tricks eagerly sought by digital SLR camera lovers, who are growing in number as DSLR camera sales continue to grow Explores the fundamental rules of composition-then how to break those rules to take captivating and unique images Informs and inspires you with the author's own gorgeous examples of landscapes, portraits, close-ups, and other photos that illustrate his concepts Helps you jump-start your creativity by showing you new ways to see Go beyond the basics and create a photography style that's all your own with this must-have guide. (shrink)

Abstract:Making works in isolation often in very remote or isolated environments, Jarvis's intimate series of landscape embodiment rituals raise the dichotomy of site-specific practice as potential platform for increased environmental awareness. Reviewing her recent environmental works in a framework of deconstructive ecopsychology, Beatrice will address through theoretical and practice based models how far the artist and landscape form a dynamic synthesis within the collaborative experience of landscape. Jarvis will debate how far site specific performance and the practice of long distance (...) walking offers an embodied landscape narrative. This paper raises the seminal question how can the body can become mirror to its surroundings, asking through embodied practice, photography, film and writing; how does the body become a living archive? (shrink)

This article studies Paul Valéry's personal reflection on photography, as it appears in his essay ?Le Discours du Centenaire de la Photographie,? based on a speech given at the Sorbonne in 1939 to members of the French Academy. It stresses the relationship between this essay and the French poet's writings on painting and aesthetics, in particular his work on Corot. Moreover, it analyzes the synthetic character of Valéry's critical approach, which attempts to bring together the language of poetry, philosophy and (...) science when dealing with this utterly modern visual language. Photography is celebrated here as a unique art form that can at the same time imitate and reproduce nature perfectly, while allowing mankind to create a cosmological vision of life and the universe. In other words, the poet underlines in this text the utmost modernity of photography, at a time when many in France were still reluctant to acknowledge its artistic identity. (shrink)

In National Camera, Roberto Tejada offers a comprehensive study of Mexican photography from the early twentieth century to today, demonstrating how images have shaped identities in Mexico, the United States, and in the borderlands where the two nations and cultures intersect--a place Tejada calls the shared image environment. The "problem" of photography in Mexico, Tejada shows, reveals cross-cultural episodes that are rife with contradictions, especially in the complex terms of cultural and sexual difference. Analyzing such topics as territory, sexuality, and (...) social and ethnic relations in image making, Tejada delves into the work of key figures including Manuel Alvarez Bravo, Edward Weston, Tina Modotti, Marius de Zayas, and Julien Levy, as well as the Agustín Víctor Casasola Archive, the Boystown photographs, and contemporary Mexican and Latina photo-based artists. From the Mexican Revolution of 1910-1920 to the U.S.-Mexico borderlands of today, Tejada traces the connective thread that photography has provided between Mexican and U.S. American intellectual and cultural production and, in doing so, defines both nations. (shrink)