The everyday practice of photography by millions of amateur photographers - the family snapshots, the holiday prints, the wedding portraits - may seem to be a spontaneous and highly personal activity. But Bourdieu and his associates show that few cultural activities are more structured and systematic than the social uses of this ordinary art. This perceptive and wide-ranging analysis of the practice of photography brings out the logic implicit in this cultural field. The norms which define the occasions (...) and the objects of photography serve to display the socially differentiated functions of, and attitudes towards, the photographic image and act. For some social groups, photography is primarily a means of preserving the present and reproducing the euphoric moments of collective celebration, whereas for other groups it is the occasion of an aesthetic judgement, in which photos are endowed with the dignity of works of art. (shrink)

According to Roger Scruton, it is not possible for photographs to be representational art. Most responses to Scruton’s scepticism are versions of the claim that Scruton disregards the extent to which intentionality features in photography; but these cannot force him to give up his notion of the ideal photograph. My approach is to argue that Scruton has misconstrued the role of causation in his discussion of photography. I claim that although Scruton insists that the ideal photograph is defined (...) by its ‘merely causal’ provenance, in fact he fails to take the causal provenance of photographs seriously enough. To replace Scruton’s notion of the ideal photograph, I offer a substantive account of the causal provenance of photographs, centred on the distinctive role of ‘the photographic event’. I conclude that, with a proper understanding of the photographic process, we have good reason to re-open the question of photography as a representational art. (shrink)

Digital photography is sweeping the country, and it’s easy to see why. You can take pictures of anything, do it quickly, see instantly what you got, save only the stuff you like, and share your pictures as prints, on the Web, as a slideshow, or even on things like mugs and mousepads. A digital camera and the appropriate software let you Take wide-angle or closeup shots, indoors or out Know immediately whether you got what you wanted Delete shots you (...) don’t like and retake them Improve your images on your computer Combine images into a montage Customize your pictures by adding special visual effects Digital photography is fun, but whether you’re an old hand at taking digital pictures or still picking out your first camera, there are plenty of times when you know what you want to do and just want to figure out how to do it, right now. That’s exactly what Digital Photography Just the Steps For Dummies helps you do. It’s designed so you can quickly find the task you want to perform and follow step-by-step instructions to get the job done, right now. Loaded with full-color photos to show you what you can do, Digital Photography Just the Steps For Dummies helps you Choose the camera, lenses, and flash equipment that are best for the type of photography you want to do Compose good pictures regardless of your subject Scan and digitize existing photos so you can enhance or repair them Change the size or format of an image Adjust color, brightness, contrast, sharpness, and other attributes of a digital image Repair tears, creases, or scratches in a scanned photo, remove red-eye, and restore a faded image Use layers to alter an image, add text, or change the background Photograph items you want to sell online to show them at their best Sort and organize photos on your computer Print picture albums, make photo T-shirts, create a slideshow, or burn a video CD When you’re looking for a clear set of instructions so you can get results right away, you want a Just the Steps For Dummies book. With Digital Photography Just the Steps For Dummies, you’ll find everything quickly comes into focus! (shrink)

The aim of this article is two-folded. First, I wish to situate Baudelaire in the midst of 19th-century media, bring attention to the way he explored the new media of his day, and suggest that he developed his own media aesthetics. Second, I wish to examine Baudelaire’s relation to photography more specifically, emphasizing his love of commonplaces and clichés. I begin by contextualizing Baudelaire’s notorious attack on photography in the Salon de 1859 and then examine three poems in (...) light of the photographic culture of Baudelaire’s day. Central here is the experiment on the notion of identity that was carried out with the spread of portrait photography: the notation of a unique identity was undermined, processes of multiplication were explored, and the poetic discourse of the “soul” was radically changed. (shrink)

This paper explores auto-photography as a form of research practice in the area of identity and self-esteem research. It allows researchers to capture and articulate the ways identity guides human action and thought. It involves the generation and examination of the static images that participants themselves believe best represent them. Auto-photography is an important tool for building bridges with marginalized groups in the research process, since it offers researchers a way to let participants speak for themselves. Furthermore, by (...) using this method researchers can avoid exclusive reliance on survey questionnaires and other such research instruments that may be culturally biased. I present two research projects using auto-photography: one involving adolescent Latina girls and one involving Indian women. Based on the experience of these projects, I discuss auto-photography's importance in identity and self-esteem research. Finally, I discuss some of the benefits and challenges of working with this method. (shrink)

Ansel Adams pointed to an analogy between photography and music, in particular to similarities between, on the one hand, negatives and prints in photography, and, on the other hand, scores and performances in classical music. Dawn M. Wilson uses her ‘multi-stage view’ of photography to (among other things) make the analogy more precise. She also invites others to expand on the analogy. In this piece I do so by, first, discussing darkness in photography and silence in (...) music; and, second, covers or versions in music and in photography. (shrink)

Creative Photography and Wales explores the photographic tradition in Wales through the work of American photojournalist Eugene Smith's work in Wales in the 1950s. Smith is regarded as a master of the photo essay and one of the most significant photographers of the twentieth century, and his photographs, set in the context of the work of photographers who shot the region in subsequent years—including those engaged in the “Valleys Project” during the 1980s—help us understand the ways in which twentieth (...) century photography fixed an image of Wales, one that still resonates today. (shrink)

Not too long after photography’s grand debut in 1839, physician and inventor Oliver Wendell Holmes described the new technology as a “mirror with a memory.” What might this phrase mean for the question of African Americans and their relationship to the vicissitudes of photography and the vagaries of memory in particular? Through readings of works of art and social activism that make use of lynching photographs, this essay considers ways in which photography has functioned as a technology (...) of memory for African Americans, what the essay calls critical black memory, and proffers a mode of historical interpretation that both plays upon and questions photography’s documentary capacity.The essay makes two claims specifically. First, the mechanical reproduction of lynching by way of the photograph has been central to the recounting and reconstitution of black political cultures throughout the Jim Crow and post-Civil Rights era. From the usage of lynching photography in pamphlets by early twentieth-century anti-lynching activists, to posters created by mid-century civil rights organizations, to their deployment in contemporary art and popular culture, this archive has been a constitutive element of black visuality more broadly. Second, African American engagements with photography as a “site of memory” suggest a mode of historical interpretation in which African Americans simultaneously critique the “truth-claims” of photography while they mobilize the medium’s documentary capacity to intervene in the classification and subjugation of black life. (shrink)

It seems odd to say that photography is not a mode of representation. For a photograph has in common with a painting the property by which the painting represents the world, the property of sharing, in some sense, the appearance of its subject. Indeed, it is sometimes thought that since a photograph more effectively shares the appearance of its subject than a typical painting, photography is a better mode of representation. Photography might even be thought of as (...) having replaced painting as a mode of visual representation. Painters have felt that if the aim of painting is really to reproduce the appearances of things, then painting must give way to whatever means are available to reproduce an appearance more accurately. It has therefore been said that painting aims to record the appearances of things only so as to capture the experience of observing them and that the accurate copying of appearances will normally be at variance with this aim. Here we have the seeds of expressionism and the origin of the view that painting is somehow purer when it is abstract and closer to its essence as an art. Roger Scruton is the author of Art and Imagination, The Aesthetics of Architecture, The Meaning of Conservatism, From Descartes to Wittgenstein, and The Politics of Culture and Other Essays. (shrink)

What is photography? Is it primarily a source of knowledge about the world or an art? Many have said the former, because it records the world automatically, others the latter because it embodies human subjectivity. Can it photography be both or must we choose? In On Photography: A Philosophical Inquiry Diarmuid Costello examines these fascinating questions and more. In so doing he introduces some of the fundamental topics and debates about the nature of photography, with the (...) help of photographic images from Paul Strand, Lee Friedlander, James Welling, Jeff Wall, and Gerhard Richter, among others. Tracing the roots of thinking about photography from its discovery, through Nineteenth Century debates about its standing as art, to Twentieth Century Modernism and post-War cultural criticism, Costello identifies the emergence of a powerful "orthodox" view of photography. The features that make photographs compelling documents are precisely those that put pressure on its standing as art; though they provide a wealth of empirical information, they cannot have the unifying vision we look for in art. He draws on the reflections of photographers and theorists, including Paul Strand, Edward Weston, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Siegfried Kracauer, Andre Bazin and Stanley Cavell to illustrate this fundamental tension. The view comes to fruition in the work of Roger Scruton and Kendall Walton. Whether pure photography is capable of representing fictions, or always presents a transparent window onto the real world becomes the key question. Recently, the orthodox view has come under increasing pressure from a new generation of philosophers who reject the contrast between machine and hand made images that underwrites it. He concludes by examining photographic agency in a digital age. Written in a clear and engaging style, On Photography: A Philosophical Inquiry is essential reading for anyone interested in the philosophy of photography, aesthetics, art, and visual studies. (shrink)

A discussion of the pioneers of the first decades of photography, along with essays on early collectors and patents.

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 ...

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 Theory in Historical Perspective: Case Studies from Contemporary Art aims to contribute to the understanding of the multifaceted and complex character of the photographic medium by dealing with various case studies selected from ...

Improve your lighting technique to produce better quality photographs Digital Photography Lighting For Dummies features the tools, concepts, and steps you need to give your subjects a high-quality look and feel. Everyone from advanced beginners to aspiring professional photographers will improve their understanding of lighting basics as well as the parts and functions of their camera. Explains the different kinds of lighting that different situations require and guides you through changing the settings on your camera Shows you how to (...) set up equipment to capture the photograph you want with the proper amount of light and shadow Offers information on the latest lighting equipment and accessories Includes techniques and skills used by film photographers like David Bailey, Ansel Adams, and Annie Leibovitz Reach for Digital Photography Lighting For Dummies and take your knowledge of lighting and photography to the next level! (shrink)

How contensted notions of modernity, civilisation and being governed were envisioned through the aid of photography.

The article focuses on the work of Ian Wallace, Jeff Wall and Rodney Graham, in particular, a notion of the studio that provides both an anchor and departure for the work of all three. This genealogy turns primarily on Wallace’s photo-conceptual work from the 1970s, which establishes the space of the studio as an allegory of painting or the modernist tradition, and as the topological equivalent of the museum and street. Using Wallace’s model of post-studio practice as an analytic, the (...) article unpacks the tensions of Wall’s notion of cinematography, highlighting his mounting hesitations with photography understood on the model of the studio system, as an inside/outside relationship and as the mimesis of painting. Finally, the article puts the notions of studio as genealogy and dispositif to work in order to understand the logic of Graham’s emphasis on the durational art of film. (shrink)

Review of: Photography from the Turin Shroud to the Turing Machine, Yanai Toister (2020)Bristol and Chicago, IL: Intellect, p/bk, 215 pp.,ISBN 978-1-78938-156-6, p/bk, £37.

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)

Georges Didi-Huberman's study is concerned with epistemological and ethical questions that arise from visual representations of the Shoah, while Michael Fried's is concerned with the ontological possibilities explored by contemporary art photography. The books have two things in common: an argument against postmodern skepticism, and an insistence that photography has become a field in which questions of history, truth, and authenticity are being explored with particular acuity. Rather than reject even the possibility that photographs have something to tell (...) us about the Shoah, Didi-Huberman shows that they can offer important insights into the difficulties and the possibilities of apprehending some aspects of the past.Fried shows that contemporary photographic work has taken on the ambitions of high modernism by accepting the challenge of “to-be-seenness.” Photography as a “historical practice” does not escape from the difficulties of evidence and of the “constructed” nature of historical understanding; photography functions neither as a pure trace of the past, nor as a mere invitation to spectacle. (shrink)

This is a critical survey of writing on the philosophy of photography.

_Fugitive Images: From Photography to Video_ Edited by Patrice Petro Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995 ISBN 0-253-20890-4 314 pp.

This study examines new and existing photographic and lens-based art focusing upon the theme of social exchange. The text explores the history of documentary photography and maps out current solutions and strategies to problems in the discourse between photographer and subject.

Photography and spirit examines images of phantoms, psychical emanations, and religious apparitions.

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)

On Photography: A Philosophical InquiryCOSTELLODIARMUIDRoutledge. 2017. _pp._182. £19.99__.

In this paper I examine the ethics of street photography. I firstly discuss the close-up ‘in-your-face’ style street photography made famous by American photographer, Bruce Gilden. In close-up street photography, the proximity of the camera to the subject and the element of surprise work in tandem to produce a striking and evocative picture. Close-up street photography is shown to be ethically contentious on wellbeing-related and autonomy-related grounds. I next examine the more orthodox ‘respectable distance’ kind of (...) street photography. In orthodox street photography, the photographer positions the camera some distance away from a nonconsenting subject that may or may not be aware a picture is to be taken. The main ethical problem with this form of street photography relates to the subject’s vanity and sense of self. When street photographers produce and publish images without the consent of subjects, they express their own creative freedom at the expense of the subject’s right to editorial control. I discuss the scope and potentially demanding practical implications of a right to editorial control. To conclude, I offer a workable solution to the ethical dilemma facing street photographers and discuss the implications of smart phones and photo-sharing social media platforms. (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)

Are you new to digital cameras? Does new technology make you nervous? Relax! You're holding in your hands the easiest guide ever to digital photography - a book that skips the long-winded explanations and shows you how things work. All you have to do is open the book and discover just how easy it is to get up to speed. * Set up your camera and learn program modes * Understand good composition and exposure * Experiment with lenses and (...) focal length * Download and organize your images * Fine-tune your photos with Photoshop Elements * Select paper and printers to make quality prints * "Simplify It" sidebars offer real-world advice * Succinct explanations walk you through step by step * Full-color screen shots demonstrate each task * Self-contained, two-page lessons make learning a snap. (shrink)

Photography has been part of Irish cultural life since 1839 but little is known of its long and sometimes complex history. Outside Ireland there has been scant attention given to Irish photography beyond picturesque tourist views of the Irish landscape and photojournalistic representations of 'The Troubles'. This book changes the picture, casting its focus between these polar, and often clichéd, extremes to address the political upheavals, social transformation and geographical re-imaginings of Ireland as a colony, a nation, a (...) province and a sovereign state. As Justin Carville demonstrates, photography has not only documented these transformations but has also helped shape how Ireland is viewed, both by itself and the rest of the world. Photography and Irelandexplores the role of the photographic image in colonial and post-colonial visual cultures of Ireland from the nineteenth century to the present day. Furthermore, it emphasises the transnational dimensions of photography in Ireland, discussing foreign photographers who have contributed to cultural imaginings of Ireland as well as indigenous Irish photographers. Beginning with a brief history of photography in Ireland the book discusses the tensions between colonial and global representations of Ireland and the formation of an indigenous photographic culture. Featuring commercial portraits and landscapes, as well as ethnographic photography, photojournalism and documentary works it explores Ireland’s photography through a number of interrelated themes. Accessibly written and accompanied by a wealth of images, Photography and Irelandis essential reading for all those interested in photography history, as well as Irish history and culture. (shrink)

Clinical photography is an important tool for teaching practitioners and field workers about the clinical manifestations of famine an.

What is ubiquitous photography? The article addresses this question and argues that ubiquity signals something more than the proliferation and dispersal of photography into everyday life. Moving beyond the question of digitization and of new or digital media, the premise of the argument is that ubiquitous photography is inseparable from the claims and innovations associated with the wider field of ubiquitous computing. Here, photography and the photographic are realigned within the terms of the technoscience industries and (...) their quest to generate ambient intelligent environments, automated systems such as face recognition technology (FRT), animated artefacts and augmented reality (AR). Employing a feminist approach to technoscience, the article offers a gendered, genealogical and interventionist critique of photography’s ‘everywhere’ status. (shrink)

Say "cheese"! Taking great pictures is a snap when you follow the tips, tricks, and techniques packed inside Photography For Dummies, which takes you all the way from choosing the right film to using your computer to turn your photos into greeting cards or Web-ready online images. Whether you're taking photos for fun or profit, you'll find expert advice on all the angles -- from taking family pictures to action, sports, and travel shots -- alongside hundreds of color and (...) black-and-white examples that show you how to make your good pictures great, and your great pictures even better. Geared for novice photographers armed with automated point-and-shoot cameras, Photography For Dummies takes you step-by-step through the entire photographic process, from choosing the right film and photo processing to using your camera's special features. And when you're ready to take the next step in photography with digital cameras, you'll find all sorts of helpful information right here, all explained in clear, easy-to-understand language. (shrink)

Your digital camera can do so much! And Digital Photography For Dummies, 6th Edition helps you shoot, edit, and share great photos. This full-color guide is packed with stuff that’s not in your camera manual — tips on upgrading your equipment, working with focus and exposure, shooting like a pro, organizing and enhancing your images, and printing them or getting them online. Are you already you’re hip-deep in images? Here’s how to manage them. This guide helps you learn what (...) you need for the way you take pictures, how to prolong battery life, the pros and cons of digital SLR, and more. Baffled by the lingo? The glossary explains all those terms and acronyms. You’ll also learn to: Set up your camera for basic shooting and learn to use automatic mode, common scene modes, and all the camera’s features Manage depth of field, exposure, and white balance, and make easy fixes with your photo editor Compose your photos for better pictures Easily transfer your pictures to the computer, print them, or distribute them electronically Edit your images and fix common problems like dim photos and red-eye Send photos to a cell phone Organize your pictures so you can find what you want Decide if your camera needs updating, what equipment you need, and what your digital darkroom should have Rich, full-color examples show what you can achieve. Digital Photography For Dummies, 6th Edition will make your digital camera a lot more fun! (shrink)

Essays on photography and the medium's history and evolving identity.

Hysteria, a mysterious disease known since antiquity, is said to have ceased to exist. Challenging this commonly held view, this is the first cross-disciplinary study to examine the current functional neuroimaging research into hysteria and compare it to the nineteenth-century image-based research into the same disorder. Paula Muhr's central argument is that, both in the nineteenth-century and the current neurobiological research on hysteria, images have enabled researchers to generate new medical insights. Through detailed case studies, Muhr traces how different images, (...) from photography to functional brain scans, have reshaped the historically situated medical understanding of this disorder that defies the mind-body dualism. (shrink)

Learn the intricacies of High Dynamic Range photography from experts and get feedback on your work High Dynamic Range photography offers a new range of creative possibilities to the photographer who is skilled in the technique. HDR requires specific camera skills as well as the use of specialized software, and the photographers who wrote this book are experts in both. They explain the process of shooting the same subject at different exposures, combining those shots into a single HDR (...) image, fine-tuning brightness and contrast, minimizing noise, layering images, and more, including creative techniques with Photoshop and Lightroom. You can submit your HDR images for feedback at photoworkshop.com. High Dynamic Range photography offers creative possibilities through specific camera and software techniques that produce highly detailed and imaginative images Two professional photographers team up to provide expert instruction in HDR camera and software techniques for those new to HDR Covers the latest software and concepts, a comprehensive exploration of HDR basics, various techniques for shooting and merging images, and creative tricks with Photoshop and Lightroom Lavishly illustrated with new examples and full of suggestions for developing a personal HDR style Students can upload their own images for feedback at photoworkshop.com Any photographer who is new to HDR will find this guide loaded with helpful instructions and encouraging advice. (shrink)

The digital camera has revolutionized photography. Sporting events, breathtaking landscapes, the mood of the sea, or a child's eyes as a present is opened-capture whatever fascinates you. Learn touse your images in ways only highly skilled professionals could manage a mere decade ago. With this practical guide in your camera bag, you'll have professional advice at your fingertips to help you get great shots, use all your camera's features, download and enhance your photos, and share them in dozens of (...) creative ways. * Understand digital camera basics * Learn the secrets for getting a good close-up * Find out when and why to use RAW format * Explore dozens of formulas for shooting a variety of scenes, including suggested lenses, settings, and lighting options * Rid your pictures of red-eye and other imperfections * Create a slide show, prints, or e-mail- and Web-ready images * Make the most of your camera's abilities with filters and other accessories. (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 powerful and celebratory account of Africa and photography will appeal to all those interested in the medium, and in how the two have interacted and informed each other over time. --.

In this beautifully illustrated book Maria Antonella Pelizzari traces the history of photography in Italy from its beginnings to the present as she guides us through the history of Italy and its ancient sites and Renaissance landmarks. Pelizzari specifically considers the role of photography in the formation of Italian national identity during times of political struggle, such as the lead up to Unification in 1860, and later in the nationalist wars of Mussolini’s regime. While many Italians and foreigners— (...) such as Fratelli Alinari or Carlo Ponti, John Ruskin or Kit Talbot—focused their lenses on architectural masterpieces, others documented the changing times and political heroes, creating icons of figures such as Garibaldi and the brigands. Pelizzari’s exploration of Italian visual traditions also includes the photographic collages of Bruno Munari, the neorealist work of photographers such as Franco Pinna, the bold stylized compositions of Mario Giacomelli, and the controversial images created by Oliviero Toscani for Benetton advertising in the 1980s. Featuring unpublished works and a rare selection of over one hundred images, this book will appeal to art collectors and students of art history and Italian culture. (shrink)

This book will appeal to general readers and sociologists as well as art historians because of its original treatment of early photography as a manifestation of class concerns.

This paper explores some issues concerning the ontology of photography. It would appear that photography’s ontology bears some significant specificities comparing with other art forms. First, the study of negative film and printed photograph relations shows us that photography has a multi-layered ontology, since although the latter is ontologically dependent upon the former, it stands autonomously as work of art. Second, I will consider the problem of forgery in photography. It seems that photographs are autographic and (...) allographic, fakeable and unfakeable. Third, ontological status of negative film will be explored. Apparently, current ontological categories aren’t pertinent as far as negative-photograph’s ontology is concerned. That’s why, relying on Gérard Genette ontological notions, I propose to consider the negative film as «immanence» and the printed photograph as work’s «transcendence». In this regard, printed photograph functions as a manifestation of the negative film. (shrink)

Helpful, easy-to-follow guide for new digital photographers over the age of 50 Digital photography is a fun and exciting hobby, but digital cameras can be overwhelming and daunting to a newcomer. If you're entering the digital photography world as an older adult—and wondering about which digital camera will meet your needs—this straightforward, helpful book is for you. Written in full colour with lots of screenshots and clear, easy-to-read type, this friendly guide assumes no previous experience in digital (...) class='Hi'>photography and walks you through the subject of digital photography from start to finish: selecting which type of digital camera is right for you, understanding the seemingly endless jargon, benefiting from valuable photograph tips, and much more. Provides guidance for purchasing your digital camera and deciphers the common jargon that is used in the field Walks you through all the features and functions of a digital camera Reveals top photography tips Explains how to retouch, enhance, and print your photos Demonstrates easy ways to share photos with friends and family Prepare properly, enjoy the freedom, and maybe even show the family a thing or two with this fun and practical guide! (shrink)

The status of photographs as keystones of historical explanation has become a topic of urgent intellectual and cultural interest around the world, at the same time as methods of shaping historical narratives are also changing in ways that compel attention to the employment of photographs in historiography. By exposing the questions we ought to raise about all historical evidence, photographs reveal not simply the potential and limits of photography as a historical source, but the potential and limits of all (...) historical sources and historical inquiry as an intellectual project. As the papers in this issue make apparent, this is precisely the promise and ultimate potential of the historical study of photographs—that it pushes their interpreters to the limits of historical analysis. This essay, which serves as an introduction to the Theme Issue, contextualizes issues raised by the articles and offers a critical synthesis of their impact on future scholarship about photography in historical analysis. (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)

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.

When Ferdinand Magellan set out to circumnavigate the globe in 1519, he wasn’t able to bring a digital camera or a smartphone with him. Yet, as the eagerly awaited images from the Mars rover prove, modern exploration is inconceivable without photography. Since its invention in 1839, photography has been integral to exploration, used by explorers, sponsors, and publishers alike, and the early twentieth century, advances in technology—and photography’s newfound cultural currency as a truthful witness to the world—made (...) the camera an indispensable tool. In Photography and Exploration, James R. Ryan uses a variety of examples, from polar journeys to space missions, to show how exploration photographs have been created, circulated, and consumed as objects of both scientific research and art. Examining a wide range of photographs and expeditions, Ryan considers how nations have often employed images as a means to scientific advancement or territorial conquest. He argues that because exploration has long been bound up with the construction of national and imperial identity, expeditionary photographs have often been used to promote claims to power—especially by the West. These images also challenge the way audiences perceive the world and their place within it. Featuring one hundred images, Photography and Exploration shines new light on how photography has shaped the image of explorers, expeditions, and the worlds they discovered. (shrink)