Following on from its hugely successful first edition, The Photography Reader: History and Theory provides deeper insight into the critical discussions around photography – its production, its uses and its effects. Presenting both the historical ideas and the continuing theoretical debates within photography and photographic study, this second edition contains essays by photographers including Edward Weston and László Moholy-Nagy, and key thinkers such as Walter Benjamin, Roland Barthes and Susan Sontag.
Along with its companion text – The Photography Cultures Reader: Representation, Agency and Identity – this is the most comprehensive introduction to photography and photographic criticism.
This new edition features:
• Over 50 additional photographs
• New essays from photographers and academics
• Revised introductions, setting ideas and debates in their historical and theoretical context
• Sections on Art photography, Documentary and Photomedia.
Includes essays by: Jan Baetens, Roland Barthes, Geoffrey Batchen, David Bate, André Bazin, Walter Benjamin, Lynn Berger, Matthew Biro, Osip Brik, Victor Burgin, Hubert Damisch, Edmundo Desnoes, Umberto Eco, Elizabeth Edwards, Steve Edwards, Andy Grundberg, Lisa Henderson, Estelle Jussim, Sarah Kember, Siegfried Kracauer, Rosalind Krauss, Martin Lister, Lev Manovich, Christian Metz, W. J. T. Mitchell, Tina Modotti, László Moholy-Nagy, Wright Morris, Darren Newbury, Daniel Palmer, Marjorie Perloff, Fred Ritchin, Martha Rosler, Steven Skopik, Abigail Solomon-Godeau, Susan Sontag, Lucy Soutter, John Szarkowski, John Tagg, Hilde Van Gelder, Ian Walker, Liz Wells, Edward Weston, Peter Wollen.
Contents
List of Illustrations
Notes on contributors
Acknowledgements
General Introduction
PART ONE
Reflections on Photography
Introduction
1 Roland Barthes
Extracts from Camera Lucida
2 Marjorie Perloff
What Has Occurred Only Once: Barthes's Winter Garden/Boltanski’s Archives of the Dead
3 Walter Benjamin
Extracts from The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction
4 W. J. T. Mitchell
Benjamin and the Political Economy of the Photograph
5 Siegfried Kracauer
Photography
6 André Bazin
The Ontology of the Photographic Image
7 Susan Sontag
Photography within the Humanities
8 Wright Morris
In Our Image
PART TWO
Photographic Seeing
Introduction
9 Hubert Damisch
Five Notes for a Phenomenology of the Photographic Image
10 Osip Brik
What the Eye does not See
11 László Moholy-Nagy
A New Instrument of Vision
12 Tina Modotti
Manifesto by Tina Modotti "Sobre la Fotografía" (On Photography)
13 John Szarkowski
Introduction to The Photographer's Eye
14 Edward Weston
Seeing Photographically
PART THREE
Meaning and Interpretation
Introduction
15 Roland Barthes
Rhetoric of the Image
16 Umberto Eco
A Photograph
17 Victor Burgin
Looking at Photographs
18 Ian Walker
Through the Picture Plane: On Looking into Photographs
19 Estelle Jussim
The Eternal Moment: Photography and Time
20 Elizabeth Edwards
Objects of Affect: Photography Beyond the Image
21 Christian Metz
Photography and Fetish
22 Peter Wollen
Fire and Ice
PART FOUR
Art Photography
Introduction
23 Abigail Solomon-Godeau
Photography After Art Photography
24 Rosalind Krauss
Photography’s Discursive Spaces: Landscape/View
25 Andy Grundberg,
The Crisis of the Real: Photography and Postmodernism
26 Steve Edwards
Snapshooters of History: passages on the postmodern argument
27 Lucy Soutter
Why Art Photography?
28 Victor Burgin
Conversation with Hilde Van Gelder
PART FIVE
Documentary
Introduction
29 John Tagg
Evidence, Truth and Order: Photographic Records and the Growth of the State
30 Darren Newbury
Photography and the Visualisation of Working Class Lives in Britain
31 Martha Rosler
In, Around, and Afterthoughts (On Documentary Photography)
32 Lisa Henderson
Access and Consent in Public Photography
33 Sarah Kember
‘The shadow of the object’: photography and realism
34 Hilde Van Gelder and Jan Baetens
Introduction: A Note on Critical Realism Today
35 Lynn Berger
The Authentic Amateur and the Democracy of Collecting Photographs
36 Edmundo Desnoes
Cuba Made Me So
PART SIX
Photomedia
Introduction
37 David Bate, Sarah Kember, Martin Lister and Liz Wells
Editorial Statement
38 Geoffrey Batchen
Photogenics
39 Daniel Palmer
Redundancy in Photography
40 Lev Manovich
The Paradoxes of Digital Photography
41 Fred Ritchin
Extracts from Of Pixels and Paradox
42 Martin Lister
Introduction from The Photographic Image in Digital Culture
43 Matthew Biro
From Analogue to Digital Photography: Bernd and Hilla Becher and Andreas Gursky
44 Steven Skopik
Digital Photography: Truth, Meaning, Aesthetics
Index
Biography
Liz Wells, curator and writer, is Professor in Photographic Culture, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, University of Plymouth, UK. She edited Photography: A Critical Introduction (2015, 5th ed.) and co-edits photographies. Publications on landscape include Land Matters: Landscape Photography, Culture and Identity (2011). She is series editor for Photography, Place, Environment.
‘A valuable and accessible resource … an outstanding aid for photography students and enthusiasts … highly recommended.’ - Media International Australia inc Culture & Policy
