Kategoria BISAC: Photography >> History

In the last decades of the nineteenth century, photography underwent one of the most momentous transformations in its history, a renegotiation of the camera's relationship to the visible world. Reasoned and Unreasoned Images considers in detail the work of three photographic investigators who developed new uses for the medium that centered on "the photography of the invisible" Alphonse Bertillon, Francis Galton, and Etienne-Jules Marey. Bertillon attempted to establish a "science of identity" by making photographic records of criminal bodies. Galton may be said to have taken...

In the midst of the Great Depression, the American government initiated one of the most ambitious national photographic projects ever undertaken. Such photographers as Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, and Gordon Parks--all then virtually unknown--were commissioned to chronicle in pictures the economic struggle and social dislocation of the Depression era. They explored every facet of rural life in an effort to document the troubles, as well as the spirit, of the nation.

Fanning out across the country, these photographers captured a nation alive with religious faith--from Dust Bowl...

The Middle East played a critical role in the development of photography as a new technology and an art form. Likewise, photography was instrumental in cultivating and maintaining Europe's distinctively Orientalist vision of the Middle East. As new advances enhanced the versatility of the medium, nineteenth-century photographers were able to mass-produce images to incite and satisfy the demands of the region's burgeoning tourist industry and the appetites of armchair travelers in Europe. In this way, the evolution of modern photography fueled an interest in visual contact with the rest of...

In this compelling work, Ariella Azoulay reconsiders the political and ethical status of photography. Describing the power relations that sustain and make possible photographic meanings, Azoulay argues that anyone -- even a stateless person -- who addresses others through photographs or is addressed by photographs can become a member of the citizenry of photography. The civil contract of photography enables anyone to pursue political agency and resistance through photography. Photography, Azoulay insists, cannot be understood separately from the many catastrophes of recent history. The...