In this landmark collection, world-renowned theorists, artists, critics, and curators explore new ways of conceiving the present and understanding art and culture in relation to it. They revisit from fresh perspectives key issues regarding modernity and postmodernity, including the relationship between art and broader social and political currents, as well as important questions about temporality and change. They also reflect on whether or not broad categories and terms such as modernity, postmodernity, globalization, and decolonization are still relevant or useful. Including twenty essays...

Since Apartheid's fall in 1994, South African photography has exploded from the grip of censorship onto the world stage. A key figure in this movement is Zwelethu Mthethwa, whose portraits powerfully frame black South Africans as dignified and defiant individuals, even under the duress of social and economic hardship. Photographing in urban and rural industrial landscapes, Mthethwa documents a range of aspects in South Africa, from domestic life and the environment to landscape and labor issues. Mthethwa's work challenges the conventions of both Western documentary work and African commercial...

Excessive Exposure documents all the chocolate-colored portraits that Bronx-born artist Lyle Ashton Harris made with a large-format Polaroid camera over the past ten years. This sequence of approximately 200 paired front and back portraits, for which Harris has become so well known, has now come to a close, making this volume the definitive publication on the series. The portraits' subjects include Harris' family and friends, art-world personalities, noted cultural figures, celebrities and politicians. These images are further distinguished by a strategic blurring of conventional...