Reframing Photography

In an accessible yet complex way, Rebekah Modrak and Bill Anthes explore photographic theory, history, and technique to bring photographic education up to date with contemporary photographic practice. --

At a critical point in the development of photography, this book offers an engaging, detailed and far-reaching examination of the key issues that are defining contemporary photographic culture. Photography Reframed addresses the impact of radical technological, social and political change across a diverse set of photographic territories: the ontology of photography; the impact of mass photographic practice; the public display of intimate life; the current state of documentary, and the political possibilities of photographic culture. These lively, accessible essays by some of the best writers in photography together go deep into the most up-to-date frameworks for analysing and understanding photographic culture and shedding light on its histories. Photography Reframed is a vital road map for anyone interested in what photography has been, what it has become, and where it is going.

Photography Theory presents forty of the world's most active art historians and theorists, including Victor Burgin, Joel Snyder, Rosalind Krauss, Alan Trachtenberg, Geoffrey Batchen, Carol Squiers, Margaret Iversen and Abigail Solomon-Godeau in animated debate on the nature of photography. Photography has been around for nearly two centuries, but we are no closer to understanding what it is. For some people, a photograph is an optically accurate impression of the world, for others, it is mainly a way of remembering people and places. Some view it as a sign of bourgeois life, a kind of addiction of the middle class, whilst others see it as a troublesome interloper that has confused people's ideas of reality and fine art to the point that they have difficulty even defining what a photograph is. For some, the whole question of finding photography's nature is itself misguided from the beginning. This provocative second volume in the Routledge The Art Seminar series presents not one but many answers to the question what makes a photograph a photograph?

Recently discovered, never-before-published photographs of the 1925 "trial of the century" present the untold story of the science journalists and scientists who gathered in Dayton, Tennessee, to befriend Scopes, assist in the defense, and publicize Science's epic challenge of Tradition.

Across the country, schools that integrate the arts into the fabric of the school day and across the curriculum defy educational odds and expectations. These schools demonstrate that the arts are profoundly cognitive and engaging and that arts integration is a strategy within the reach of schools even in the poorest communities. Putting the Arts in the Picture makes a powerful and original argument for placing the arts at the center of educational renewal. The authors investigate the success of arts integrated schools and the programs that have supported them, and explain why arts integration has such cognitive power. Putting the Arts in the Picture places arts integration within the long arc of efforts to realize the democratic promise of public education and examines how other nations have mobilized the arts to focus young people's need to learn and grow. Throughout, the authors suggest practical strategies--for educators, policymakers, school reformers, philanthropists, and parents--that can make arts integration broadly available to the children who need it most.

Contemporary art photography is paradoxical. Anyone can look at it and form an opinion about what they see, yet it represents critical positions that only a small minority of well-informed viewers can usually access. Why Art Photography? provides a lively, accessible introduction to the ideas behind today’s striking photographic images. Exploring key issues such as ambiguity, objectivity, staging, authenticity, the digital and photography’s expanded field, the chapters offer fresh perspectives on existing debates. While the main focus is on the present, the book traces concepts and visual styles to their origins, drawing on carefully selected examples from recognized international photographers. Images, theories and histories are described in a clear, concise manner and key terms are defined along the way. This book is ideal for anyone wanting to deepen their understanding of photography as an art form.

Incongruous images -- Why school photos? -- Imperial frames -- Framing difference -- Exclusionary frames -- The "disobedient gaze."

In 1975 the exhibition 'New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape' crystallized a new view of the American West. The sublime Americana vistas of Ansel Adams were replaced and subverted by images of a landscape inundated with banal symbols of humanity. The essays in this anthology will add an important new dimension to the studies of art history and visual culture.