1st Edition
Transformational Imagemaking: Handmade Photography Since 1960
The Photographer’s Hand. West Coast Roots. Ground Breaking Exhibitions. East Coast Makers. Progression. Evolution. Inferences.
Biography
Robert Hirsch is a photographic imagemaker, historian, and writer. Former executive director of CEPA Gallery and now director of Light Research in Buffalo, NY, he has published scores of articles about visual culture and has interviewed many significant photographers of our time. His books include Light and Lens: Photography in the Digital Age; Exploring Color Photography: From Film to Pixels; Photographic Possibilities: The Expressive Use of Equipment, Ideas, Materials, and Processes; and Seizing the Light: A Social History of Photography. A former associate editor for Digital Camera (UK) and Photovision, Hirsch is a regular contributor to Photo Technique. He has also written for Afterimage, exposure, History of Photography, The Photo Review, and World Book Encyclopedia, among others. He has curated over 200 exhibitions, and had many one-person and group shows of his own work. For details visit: www.lightresearch.net
"[I]n a substantial preface, an introductory scholarly essay, and over fifty artists’ interviews, this beautifully illustrated volume uncovers traditions of what are commonly called alternative photographic practices – the ‘transformational imagemaking’ of Hirsch’s title – as having been central to photography from its very start. Above all else, this book presents a strand of photography-based art that has too often flown under the radar of scholars of photographic history, and it delivers an astonishing array of recent work that harnesses photography’s perceived indexicality to play with received ideas about perception and reality. In so doing, the book allows for a reconsideration of all photographs as products of artistic imagination created by ‘makers’ rather than ‘takers’, in Hirsch’s words." - Elizabeth Otto, History of Photography, 39:2, 204-206
"Preceding the visual collection of images are a thought-provoking preface and in-depth history on the artform of handmade photography, beginning with the first hand colored Daguerreotypes and bringing us all the way up to modern day haptics and realists. After reading this comprehensive history retold with such devotion to the subject, one cannot help but gain increased respect for the meeting of philosophy, creativity, and kinesthesia that underlies the handmade photography world." - One Twelve Publishing
