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Hershberger is the winner of a 2015 Insight Award from the Society for Photographic Education for his work on this book and for his overall contributions to the field!Photographic Theory: An Historical Anthology presents a compendium of readings spanning ancient times to the digital age that are related to the history, nature, and current status of debates in photographic theory. Offers an authoritative and academically up-to-date compendium of the history of photographic theory Represents the only collection to include ancient, Renaissance, and 19th-, 20th-, and 21st-century writings related to the subject Stresses the drama of historical and contemporary debates within theoretical circles Features comprehensive coverage of recent trends in digital photography Fills a much-needed gap in the existing literature
List of contents
Introduction
I. Before Photography to Invention: c. 380 B.C.E.-1839
Camera/Vision
1.1 Excerpts from the Allegory of the Cave. In The Republic
Plato, c. 380 B.C.E.
1.2 The Function of the Eye, As Explained by the Camera Obscura
Leonardo Da Vinci, c. 1520
1.3 Description of the Camera Lucida
William H. Wollaston, 1807
Art/History
1.4 Excerpts on Linear Perspective. In On Painting.
Leon Battista Alberti, 1540
1.5 Account of the late Mr. [Robert] Barker
Anonymous, 1806
1.6 Description of the Process of Painting and Effects of Light Invented by Daguerre, and Applied by Him to the Pictures of the Diorama
Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre, 1839
II. Invention to Pictorialism: 1839-c. 1880
What is Photography?
2.1 Some Account of the Art of Photogenic Drawing
William Henry Fox Talbot, 1839 [March]
2.2 The Pencil of Nature. A New Discovery
Nathaniel Parker Willis and Timothy O. Porter eds., 1839 [April]
2.3 Report [on the Daguerreotype to the Chamber of Deputies]
François Arago, 1839 [July]
Art/History
2.4 Upon Photography in an Artistic View, and in Its Relations to the Arts
Sir William J. Newton, 1853
2.5 La Photographie
Antoine Joseph Wiertz, 1855
2.6 Photography
Eastlake, Lady (Elizabeth) 1857
Camera/Vision
2.7 The Stereoscope and the Stereograph
Oliver Wendell Holmes, 1859
2.8 Combination Printing. In Pictorial Effect in Photography
Henry Peach Robinson, 1869
2.9 Annals of My Glass House
Julia Margaret Cameron, 1874
III. Pictorialism to/and/vs. Modernism: c. 1880-c. 1920
Camera/Vision
3.1 Focussing. In Naturalistic Photography for Students of the Art
Peter Henry Emerson, 1890
3.2 The Death of Naturalistic Photography
Peter Henry Emerson, 1890
3.3 The Hand Camera--Its Present Importance
Alfred Stieglitz, 1896
Interdisciplinary Approaches
3.4 Photo-Chemical Investigations and a New Method of Determination of the Sensitiveness of Photographic Plates
Ferdinand Hurter and Vero C. Driffield, 1890
3.5 Logic as Semiotic: The Theory of Signs
Charles Sanders Peirce, c. 1900
3.6 Intuition and Art. In Æsthetic: As Science of Expression and General Linguistic
Benedetto Croce, 1902
3.7 The Cinematographical Mechanism of Thought and the Mechanistic Illusion...In Creative Evolution
Henri Bergson, 1907
What Should Photographs Look Like?
3.8 On the Straight Print
Robert Demachy, 1907
3.9 What is a "Straight Print"?
Frederick H. Evans, 1907
3.10 Photography and Artistic-Photography
Marius De Zayas, 1913
IV. Modernism to Postmodernism: c. 1920-c. 1960
Camera/Vision
4.1 Photography and the New God
Paul Strand, 1922
4.2 Light: A Medium of Plastic Expression
László Moholy-Nagy, 1923
4.3 Seeing Photographically
Edward Weston, 1943
4.4 The Camera's Glass Eye
Clement Greenberg, 1946
What Should Photographs Look Like?
4.5 Aims
Albert Renger-Patzsch, 1927
4.6 A Personal Credo
Ansel Adams, 1943
4.7 Our Illustrations
Frank R. Fraprie, 1943
4.8 Photography at the Crossroads
Berenice Abbott, 1951
Art /History
4.9 Excerpts from Perspective as Symbolic Form
Erwin Panofsky, 1927
4.10 The Age of the World Picture
Martin Heidegger, 1938/52
4.11 Excerpts from Museum Without Walls
André Malraux, 1947
Interdisciplinary Approaches
4.12 Photography and Typography
Jan Tschichold, 1928
About the author
Andrew E. Hershberger is Associate Professor of Contemporary Art History and Chair of Art History at Bowling Green State University, Ohio. He has published numerous journal articles in
History of Photography, Art Journal, Early Popular Visual Culture, Analecta Husserliana, Journal on Excellence in College Teaching, Academe, and
Arts of Asia.
Report
"Overdue, and thus all the more welcome, is Andrew E. Hershberger s Photographic Theory: An Historical Anthology , a gathering more akin to a boisterous mixer than to a staid reunion." ( Taylor & Francis Online , 1 June 2015)
"This chronologically (and, to a lesser extent, thematically) organized selection of key contributions to photographic theory display both the highly exciting diversity of theoretical questions raised by the emergence, development, triumph, and eventual metamorphosis of photography and the amazing possibility to organize the sometimes savage heterogenity of this material along unobtrusive and simple art-historical lines." - Leonardo Online (1 February 2014)
