ARTS1202: Photography in Digital Culture

From privacy concerns regarding Google Street View to surveillance photography's association with terrorism and sexual predators, photography as an art has become complex terrain upon which anxieties about public space have been played out. Yet the photographic threat is not limited to the image alone. A range of social, technological, and political issues converge in these rising anxieties and affect the practice, circulation, and consumption of contemporary public photography today. The Culture of Photography in Public Space collects essays and photographs that offer a new response to these restrictions, the events, and the anxieties that give rise to them.

Photography can seem to capture reality and the eye like no other medium, commanding belief and wielding the power of proof. In some cases, a photograph itself is attributed the force of the real. How can a piece of chemically discolored paper have such potency? How does the meaning of a photograph become fixed? In The Disciplinary Frame, John Tagg claims that, to answer these questions, we must look at the ways in which all that frames photographyOCothe discourse that surrounds it and the institutions that circulate itOCodetermines what counts as truth. The meaning and power of photographs, Tagg asserts, are discursive effects of the regimens that produce them as official record, documentary image, historical evidence, or art. Teasing out the historical processes involved, he examines a series of revealing case studies from nineteenth-century European and American photographs to Depression-era works by Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, and Margaret Bourke-White to the conceptualist photography of John Baldessari. Central to this transformative work are questions of cultural strategy, the growth of the state, and broad issues of power and representation: how the discipline of the frame holds both photographic image and viewer in place, without erasing the possibility for evading, and even resisting, capture. Photographs, Tagg ultimately finds, are at once too big and too small for the frames in which they are enclosedOCoalways saying more than is wanted and less than is desired.

On Writing with Photography explores what happens to texts-and images-when they are brought together, addressing a wide range of genres and media, including graphic novels, children's books, photo-essays, films, diaries, newspapers, and art installations. Together, these essays help explain how writers and photographers-past and present-have served as powerful creative resources for each other.

Photography, Anthropology and History examines the complex historical relationship between photography and anthropology, and in particular the strong emergence of the contemporary relevance of historical images. Thematically organized, and focusing on the visual practices developed within anthropology as a discipline, this book brings together a range of contemporary and methodologically innovative approaches to the historical image within anthropology. Importantly, it also demonstrates the ongoing relevance of both the historical image and the notion of the archive to recent anthropological thought. As current research rethinks the relationship between photography and anthropology, this volume will serve as a stimulus to this new phase of research as an essential text and methodological reference point in any course that addresses the relationship between anthropology and visuality.

Photography: A Critical Introduction was the first introductory textbook to examine key debates in photographic theory and place them in their social and political contexts, and is now established as one of the leading textbooks in its field. Written especially for students in higher education and for introductory college courses, this fully revised edition provides a coherent introduction to the nature of photographic seeing. Individual chapters cover: Key debates in photographic theory and history Documentary photography and photojournalism Personal and popular photography Photography and the human body Photography and commodity culture Photography as art This revised and updated fifth edition includes: New case studies on topics such as: materialism and embodiment, the commodification of human experience, and an extended discussion of landscape as genre. 98 photographs and images, featuring work from: Bill Brandt, Susan Derges, Rineke Dijkstra, Fran Herbello, Hannah Höch, Karen Knorr, Dorothea Lange, Chrystel Lebas, Susan Meiselas, Lee Miller, Martin Parr, Ingrid Pollard, Jacob Riis, Alexander Rodchenko, Andres Serrano, Cindy Sherman and Jeff Wall. Fully updated resource information, including guides to public archives and useful websites. A full glossary of terms and a comprehensive bibliography. Contributors: Michelle Henning, Patricia Holland, Derrick Price, Anandi Ramamurthy and Liz Wells.

At a critical point in the development of photography, this book offers an engaging, detailed and far-reaching examination of the key issues that are defining contemporary photographic culture. Photography Reframed addresses the impact of radical technological, social and political change across a diverse set of photographic territories: the ontology of photography; the impact of mass photographic practice; the public display of intimate life; the current state of documentary, and the political possibilities of photographic culture. These lively, accessible essays by some of the best writers in photography together go deep into the most up-to-date frameworks for analysing and understanding photographic culture and shedding light on its histories. Photography Reframed is a vital road map for anyone interested in what photography has been, what it has become, and where it is going.

Subtext invites and encourages personal and blatantly subjective responses to photographs and analyzes the drivers behind them. During decades of participating in critiques as both student and teacher, André Ruesch has become convinced that it is the personal response to work that connects us in the most visceral and meaningful way. This book aims to encourage and educate viewers how to read and understand photographs on a deeper level, honoring and validating their responses to photographs. This book seeks to vitalize students in the photography classroom. Rather than a dense tome of theory, this is an accessible guide to taking individual ownership of--and enjoying--the visual experience. To be visually literate is comparable to being linguistically literate. Such literacy is necessary to engender a deeper understanding and valuation of culture: both types of literacy create, enrich, define and historically document the expression of one individual to be shared by all.　 　　

American women have made significant contributions to the field of photography for well over a century. This bibliography compiles more than 1,070 sources for over 600 photographers from the 1880s to the present. As women's role in society changed, so did their role as photographers. In the early years, women often served as photographic assistants in their husbands' studios. The photography equipment, initially heavy and difficult to transport, was improved in the 1880s by George Eastman's innovations. With the lighter camera equipment, photography became accessible to everyone. Women photographers became journalists and portraitists who documented vanishing cultures and ways of life. Many of these important female photographers recorded life in the growing Northwest and the streets of New York City, became pioneers of historic photography as they captured the plight of Americans fleeing the Dust Bowl and the horrors of the concentration camps, and were members of the Photo-Secessionist Movement to promote photography as a true art form. This source serves as a checklist for not only the famous but also the less familiar women photographers who deserve attention.

Cameras, and what they capture, forever changed our perception of the world, and of ourselves. Few inventions have had the impact of this ingenious, elegant, and deceptively simple device. This gorgeous cornerstone volume, created in collaboration with the world-famous George Eastman House, celebrates the camera and the art of the photograph. It spans almost two hundred years of progress, from the first faint image ever caught to the instantaneous pictures snapped by today’s state-of-the-art digital equipment. The informative narrative by Todd Gustavson traces the camera’s development, the lives of its brilliant but often eccentric inventors, and the artists behind the lens. Images and highly descriptive captions for more than 350 cameras from the George Eastman House Collection, plus more than 100 historic photos, ads, and drawings, complement the text. A foreword by the George Eastman House Director Anthony Bannon, and insightful essays by Steve Sasson, inventor of the digital camera, and Alexis Gerard, visionary founder and president of Future Image Inc., completes this illuminating study of one of the greatest modern technological achievements.  

Containing 30 essays that embody the history of photography, this collection includes contributions from Niepce, Daguerre, Fox, Talbot, Poe, Emerson, Hine, Stieglitz, and Weston, among others.

The Encyclopedia of Twentieth-Century Photography explores the vast international scope of twentieth-century photography and explains that history with a wide-ranging, interdisciplinary manner. This unique approach covers the aesthetic history of photography as an evolving art and documentary form, while also recognizing it as a developing technology and cultural force. This Encyclopedia presents the important developments, movements, photographers, photographic institutions, and theoretical aspects of the field along with information about equipment, techniques, and practical applications of photography. To bring this history alive for the reader, the set is illustrated in black and white throughout, and each volume contains a color plate section. A useful glossary of terms is also included.

The Miracle of Analogy is the first of a two-volume reconceptualization of photography. It argues that photography originates in what is seen, rather than in the human eye or the camera lens, and that it is the world's primary way of revealing itself to us. Neither an index, representation, nor copy, as conventional studies would have it, the photographic image is an analogy. This principle obtains at every level of its being: a photograph analogizes its referent, the negative from which it is generated, every other print that is struck from that negative, and all of its digital "offspring." Photography is also unstoppably developmental, both at the level of the individual image and of medium. The photograph moves through time, in search of other "kin," some of which may be visual, but others of which may be literary, architectural, philosophical, or literary. Finally, photography develops with us, and in response to us. It assumes historically legible forms, but when we divest them of their saving power, as we always seem to do, it goes elsewhere. The present volume focuses on the nineteenth century and some of its contemporary progeny. It begins with the camera obscura, which morphed into chemical photography and lives on in digital form, and ends with Walter Benjamin. Key figures discussed along the way include Nicéphore Niépce, Louis Daguerre, William Fox-Talbot, Jeff Wall, and Joan Fontcuberta.

This new edition of Photography: A Critical Introduction retains the thematic structure and text features of its predecessors but also expands coverage on photojournalism, digital imaging techniques, race and colonialism. The content has been updated with additional international and contemporary examples and images throughout and the inclusion of colour photos, and this seminal text for photography students identifies key debates in photographic theory, stimulates discussion and evaluation of the critical use of photographic images and ways of seeing. Features of this new edition include: * key concepts and short biographies of major thinkers * updated international and contemporary case studies and examples * a full glossary of terms, a comprehensive bibliography * resource information, including guides to public archives and useful websites.  

The relatively new medium of photography has generated, from its inception, intense debate over its merits as an art form. In Reading Photography, Sri-Kartini Leet brings together over 100 extracts from writings on different themes in the medium to explore the history of the art of photography. Prize: A Choice Outstanding Academic Title for 2012

Reflections in Black, the first comprehensive history of black photographers, is Deborah Willis's long-awaited, groundbreaking assemblage of photographs of African American life from 1840 to the present. Willis, a curator of photography at the Smithsonian Institution, has selected nearly 600 stunning images that give us rich, hugely moving glimpses of black life, from slavery to the Great Migrations, from rare antebellum portraits to 1990s middle-class families. Featuring the work of undisputed masters such as James Presley Ball, C. M. Battey, James VanDerZee, Morgan and Marvin Smith, Gordon Parks, Moneta Sleet, Jr., and Carrie Mae Weems, among hundreds of others, Reflections in Black is, most powerfully, a refutation of the gross caricature of the many mainstream photographers who have continually emphasized poverty over family, despair over hope. Recalling Roman Vishniac's Vanished World in terms of its documentary importance, and Brian Lanker's I Dream a World in terms of its exceptional beauty, Reflections in Black is not only an exceptional gift book for any occasion but also a work so significant that it has the power to reconfigure our conception of American history itself. It demands to be included in every American family's library as the record of an essential part of our heritage. Publication will coincide and tie in with a major exhibition at The Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC, which will then travel to Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Albany, New York; Corpus Christi, Texas; and other cities.

The rise of digital photography and imaging has transformed thelandscape of visual communication and culture. Events, activities,moments, objects, and people are ?captured' and distributedas images on an unprecedented scale. Many of these are sharedpublicly; some remain private, others become intellectual property,and some have the potential to shape global events. In this timelyintroduction, the ubiquity of photography is explored in relationto interdisciplinary debates about changes in the production,distribution, and consumption of images in digital culture. Ubiquitous Photography provides a critical examination ofthe technologies, practices, and cultural significance of digitalphotography, placing the phenomenon in historical, social, andpolitical-economic context. It examines shifts in image-making,storage, commodification, and interpretation as highly significantprocesses of digitally mediated communication in an increasinglyimage-rich culture. It covers debates in social and culturaltheory, the history and politics of image-making and manipulation,the current explosion in amateur photography, tagging and sharingvia social networking, and citizen journalism. The book engageswith key contemporary theoretical issues about memory and mobility,authorship and authenticity, immediacy and preservation, and theincreased visibility of ordinary social life. Drawing upon a range of sources and original empirical research,Ubiquitous Photography provides a comprehensive introductionto critical academic debate and concrete developments in the fieldof digital photography. It is essential reading for students andscholars interested in media and society, visual culture, anddigital technology.

Although photography is well along in its second century, until now virtually nothing has been written about the work of black women photographers. In this historical survey Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe presents an impressive selection of photographs, commenting on the careers of the professional and fine arts photographers, from the pioneers to the women of today. The book is divided into six parts, each "Overview" describing the triumphs and struggles of various photographers of different eras. The careful attention to detail is illustrated in the photographs of early twentieth-century photographer Elnora Teal and in the work of Eslanda (Mrs. Paul) Robeson from her travels throughout the world. It also offers glimpses of black Hollywood in the 1940s and 1950s and of New York's Harlem during the same period. The photographs of contemporary photographers, among them Coreen Simpson, with her flamboyant style, and Fern Logan, with her strong eye, demonstrate the talent and style black women continue to show in the,field of photography. This collection of photographs - meaningful, striking, handsome - will give pleasure to photo buffs, historians, and to anyone fascinated by this neglected but vital part of history.

From the camera lucida to the latest in digital image making and computer manipulation, photographic technology has dramatically changed throughout its nearly 200-year history, as succinctly explained and powerfully illustrated in A World History of Photography. Thanks to the unique immediacy with which photography captures perspective and history, the popularity and use of the camera spread rapidly around the globe. Today, photography is ubiquitous: from newspapers and fashion magazines to billboards and the film industry, cultures worldwide have embraced this malleable artistic medium for a limitless variety of purposes. Naomi Rosenblum's classic text investigates all aspects of photography -- aesthetic, documentary, commercial, and technical -- while placing photos in their historical context. Included among the more than 800 photographs by men and women are both little-known and celebrated masterpieces, arranged in stimulating juxtapositions that illuminate their visual power. Authoritative and unbiased, Rosenblum's chronicle of photography both chronologically and thematically traces the evolution of this still-young art form. Exploring the diverse roles that photography has played in the communication of ideas, Rosenblum devotes special attention to topics such as portraiture, documentation, advertising, and photojournalism, and to the camera as a means of personal artistic expression. The revised fourth edition includes updates on technical advances as well as a new chapter on contemporary photographers. Armed with the expressive vigor of its images, this thorough and accessible volume will appeal to all.