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This book argues for a renewed understanding of the fundamentally uncanny quality of the medium of photography. It especially makes the case for the capacity of certain photographs-precisely through their uncanniness-to contest structures of political and social dominance. The uncanny as a quality that unsettles the perception of home emerges as a symptom of modern and contemporary society and also as an aesthetic apparatus by which some key photographs critique the hegemony of capitalist and industrialist domains. The book's historical scope is large, beginning with William Henry Fox Talbot and closing with contemporary indigenous photographer Bear Allison and contemporary African American photographer Devin Allen. Through close readings, exegesis, of individual photographs and careful deployment of contemporary political and aesthetic theory, The Photographic Uncanny argues for a re-envisioning of the political capacity of photography to expose the haunted, homeless,condition of modernity.
List of contents
1.A Political Uncanny: The Homelessness of Photographs.- 2.Eugene Atget's Sacred Spaces: Uncanny Capitalism.- 3.August Sander's Habitus.- 4.Walker Evans's Emotions.- 5.Diane Arbus's Uncanny Aura.- 6.Second Selves: Woodman, Meatyard, Allison.- 7.North American Uncanny: Shelley Niro.- 8.Ghosts of West Baltimore: Devin Allen.- 9.Conclusion: Revisiting the 18th-Century Visual Uncanny.
About the author
Claire Raymond is the author of six books on aesthetic theory, feminist theory, and photography. Her previous works include Witnessing Sadism in Texts of the American South (2014), Francesca Woodman’s Dark Gaze (2016), and Women Photographers and Feminist Aesthetics (2017). She teaches for the Program in Art History at the University of Virginia, USA.
Summary
This book argues for a renewed understanding of the fundamentally uncanny quality of the medium of photography. It especially makes the case for the capacity of certain photographs—precisely through their uncanniness—to contest structures of political and social dominance. The uncanny as a quality that unsettles the perception of home emerges as a symptom of modern and contemporary society and also as an aesthetic apparatus by which some key photographs critique the hegemony of capitalist and industrialist domains. The book’s historical scope is large, beginning with William Henry Fox Talbot and closing with contemporary indigenous photographer Bear Allison and contemporary African American photographer Devin Allen. Through close readings, exegesis, of individual photographs and careful deployment of contemporary political and aesthetic theory,
The Photographic Uncanny argues for a re-envisioning of the political capacity of photography to expose the haunted, homeless,condition of modernity.
