In the 1970s, from his base in Los Angeles, artist Robert Cumming (born 1943) made functional-looking but ultimately useless constructions, created primarily to be photographed with his 8x10 camera. Playing with props, proportions, unusual angles, light and mirrors, Cumming invited viewers to look in--and then to look again, second-guessing what they saw. The Difficulties of Nonsense is the first comprehensive publication to survey Cumming's significant series of conceptual black-and-white and color photographs from the 1970s, now a touchstone for contemporary artists, and focus on the...