Art and Photography (Themes and Movements Series) FROM THE PUBLISHER
Art and Photography is the first book of its kind to survey the presence of photography in artistic practice from the 1960s onwards. The photographic image is central to contemporary art and the debates that surround it, yet it took most of the last century for it to acquire this status. Despite the extensive exploration of photography as an independent art in the Modernist era, it was not until the late twentieth century that artists, museums and galleries began to explore its social roles as a medium of representation. This volume provides a comprehensive survey of photography's place in recent art history, further contextualized in the Documents section by original artists' statements and interviews, together with critical and theoretical reflections on the photographic and the art of the photograph.
SYNOPSIS
This oversize book (10.25x11.25") is not a restful read. There's visual and intellectual stimulation on every page: images from the fulminating late 1960s to the present, and text and captions in a variety of typefaces (some so big, it hurts). In all, this volume presents 190 photos by 160 significant international artists--photographers who have explored and pushed the boundaries of the medium (and of our sensibilities). The images are accompanied by artist statements and interviews as well as reflections on photography by dozens of thinkers, including Roland Barthes, Jean Baudrillard, Clement Greenberg, Walter Benjamin, André Malraux, among others. Arrangement is chronological within some designated themes (e.g. memories, the urban and the everyday, the studio image). Providing the preface and the introductory survey material is editor David Campany, a writer and an artist himself who lectures in the history and theory of photography at Surrey Institute of Art and Design, Farnham, England. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
FROM THE CRITICS
Library Journal
This generously illustrated book presents 190 works by 160 significant international artists, most of whom live in the United States, England, or Germany. Campany (photography, Surrey Inst. of Art & Design) surveys the variety of spaces photography has occupied in art since the mid-1960s. He uses eight themes (e.g., "Memories and Archives," "Objective Objects," and "Traces of Traces") that depart from but complement those from the histories of art and photography. While he arranges his text in the format prescribed by the "Themes and Movements" series editors-with an introductory essay, key artworks, a documents section, artists' and authors' biographies, a bibliography, and an index-Campany does not cover the subject in a formulaic way. His compilation of excerpted texts by art critics, philosophers, professors, interviewers, photographers, and others nicely complements his essay and the featured works. Well documented (though with a few editorial oversights), Campany's noteworthy if not seminal contribution to the history of photography reads like a well-designed museum exhibition catalog. Recommended for most large public and undergraduate academic library collections encompassing photography and the visual arts.-Cheryl Ann Lajos, Free Lib. of Philadelphia Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
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