In an 1828 letter to his partner, Nicephore Niepce, Louis Daguerre wrote, "I am burning with desire to see your experiments from nature." In this book, Geoffrey Batchen analyzes the desire to photograph as it emerged within the philosophical and scientific milieus that preceded the actual invention of photography. Recent accounts of photography's identity tend to divide between the postmodern view that all identity is determined by context and a formalist effort to define the fundamental characteristics of photography as a medium. Batchen critiques both approaches by way of a detailed...

The remarkable photography collection of the University of New Mexico Art Museum owes its unique character and quality to the directors, curators, scholars, and artists who have taught, worked, and studied at the museum and in the university s Department of Art and Art History. In this indispensable book, these distinguished scholars and artists reflect on the pictures from the collection that hold significance to them. Through their own professional and artistic practice, they represent different generations of aesthetic voices and intellectual directions.

As one of the earliest...