1st Edition

Global Photography A Critical History

    362 Pages
    by Routledge

    362 Pages
    by Routledge

    This innovative text recounts the history of photography through a series of thematically structured chapters. Designed and written for students studying photography and its history, each chapter approaches its subject by introducing a range of international, contemporary photographers and then contextualizing their work in historical terms. 

    The book offers students an accessible route to gain an understanding of the key genres, theories and debates that are fundamental to the study of this rich and complex medium. Individual chapters cover major topics, including: · Description and Abstraction · Truth and Fiction · The Body · Landscape · War · Politics of Representation · Form · Appropriation · Museums · The Archive · The Cinematic · Fashion Photography 

    Boxed focus studies throughout the text offer short interviews, curatorial statements and reflections by photographers, critics and leading scholars that link photography's history with its practice. Short chapter summaries, research questions and further reading lists help to reinforce learning and promote discussion. Whether coming to the subject from an applied photography or art history background, students will benefit from this book's engaging, example-led approach to the subject, gaining a sophisticated understanding of international photography in historical terms.

    Introduction 

    Heather Diack, Erina Duganne, and Terri Weissman 

    I. Realisms 

    Erina Duganne 

    1. Description and Abstraction 

    Nature 

    The Body Process 

    Focus Box: The Helsinki School 

    Timothy Persons 

    2. Truth and Fiction 

    Focus Box: DAILY, IN A NIMBLE SEA 

    Barry Stone 

    Staging Painting Constructions 

    II. Evidence 

    Terri Weissman 

    3. Measuring the Body 

    (Radical) Ethnography 

    Self and Body 

    Focus Box: Photography of the Minamata Disaster 

    Namiko Kunimoto 

    Labor 

    4. Mapping the Land 

    Borders 

    Ecology 

    Focus Box: Ecocritical Voices 

    Subhankar Banerjee 

    T.J.Demos and Charlotte Cotton 

    History 

    III. Ethics

    Heather Diack 

    5. Politics of Representation 

    Visual Signs 

    Absence 

    Identification and Dislocation 

    Focus Box: Documents and Documentary 

    Martha Rosler

    6. Pictures of War  

    The Politics of Proximity Afterimages Bearing Witness 

    Focus Box: Images of War or War of Images? 

    Khaled Barakeh 

    IV. Art Heather Diack 

    7. Form 

    The Shape of Vision 

    The Unexpected in the Ordinary 

    Hybridity and Objecthood 

    Focus Box: Abstract Labor 

    Drew Sawyer 

    8. Appropriation 

    Iconic Images 

    Altered Histories 

    Ownership, Authorship and Originality 

    Focus Box: Advertisement Extraction: An interview with Juan David Laserna Montoya 

    Juan David Laserna Montoya, Gina McDaniel Tarver, and Erina Duganne 

    V. Collections

    Erina Duganne 

    9. Museums 

    The Judgment Seat 

    African Agency 

    Focus Box: Correspondence and Annotation: An interview with Raqs Media Collective 

    Monica Narula, Shuddhabrata Sengupta, and Amy L. Powell 

    Everyday Pictures 

    10. Archives Collections 

    Focus Box: The Surface of Things: A History of Photography from the Swahili Coast 

    Prita Meier 

    Memory Time 

    VI. Expanded Field 

    Terri Weissman 

    11. Celebrity Style, the Publicity Shot, and the Maverick 

    Language of Fashion 

    Celebrity Design and the Editorial Layout 

    Focus Box: Owning Beauty 

    Stephanie Baptist 

    The Politics and Power of Dress 

    12. Photography and the Cinematic  

    An Uncertain Perception: Stilled Movement and Staged Stillness 

    Focus Box: Moving Stills 

    Marta Zarzycka 

    Extended Time in Still and Moving Images Projection

    Biography

    Erina Duganne is Associate Professor of Art History in the School of Art and Design at Texas State University where she teaches courses on modern and contemporary art, photography, and visual culture. She is the author of The Self in Black and White: Race and Subjectivity in Postwar American Photography, was a co-curator, a co-editor, and an essayist for the exhibition and accompanying publication, Beautiful Suffering: Photography and the Traffic in Pain (2007).

    Heather Diack is Associate Professor of Contemporary Art History at the University of Miami. She is the author of Documents of Doubt: The Photographic Conditions of Conceptual Art (2020).

    Terri Weissman is Associate Professor of Art History in the School of Art and Design at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign where she teaches modern and contemporary art history, the history of photography and the history of design. She is also affiliated with the University of Illinois's Unit for Criticism and Interpretative Theory. She is the author of The Realisms of Berenice Abbott: Documentary Photography and Political Action and was co-curator and co-author for the exhibition and accompanying publication American Modern: Documentary Photographs by Abbott, Evans, and Bourke-White (2010).

    "Global Photography boldly answers the calls to expand and reframe the grand narrative that scholars constructed for photography in the twentieth century. The book broadens the geographic and temporal scope of traditional surveys, integrates multiple voices, and places history into productive dialogue with the present—all while remaining critical of its own choices and cultural biases, and skeptical of any text that claims to represent the whole story of photography."

    Tanya Sheehan, William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Art, Colby College