Photography and its Critics

Erscheinungsjahr 2014
ISBN: 978-0-521-55043-7
Verlag: Cambridge University Press

Buch, Englisch, 240 Seiten, Format (B × H): 183 mm x 260 mm, Gewicht: 658 g

Reihe: Perspectives on Photography

First published in 1997, Photography and its Critics offers an overview of nineteenth-century American and European writing about photography from such disparate fields as art theory, social reform, and physiology. The earliest criticism of the invention was informed by an ample legacy of notions about objectivity, appearances, and copying. Received ideas about neutral vision, intuitive genius, and progress in art also shaped nineteenth-century understanding of photography. In this study, Mary Warner Marien argues that photography was an important social and cultural symbol for modernity and change in several fields, such as art and social reform. Moreover, she demonstrates how photography quickly emerged as a pliant symbol for modernity and change, one that could as easily oppose progress as promote democracy.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Marien, Mary Warner

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Kunst Fotografie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1. The origins of photographic discourse; 2. Photography and the modern in nineteenth-century thought; 3. Art, photography and society; 4. Forced to be free: photography, literacy, and mass culture; 5. The lure of modernity; Epilogue: ghosts: photography and the modern; Bibliographic survey.