Politics Unseen - Group F.64 Photography and the Problem of Purity

In Politics Unseen, Ellen Macfarlane radically reframes the "pure photographs" of California art photography society Group f.64, known for depicting Western landscapes, fruits and vegetables, flowers, and faces. By foregrounding f.64 members' and their prints' alliances across commercial, political, and artistic domains, the book shatters entrenched understandings of the group as disinterested in contemporary events and unseats conceptions of its prints as icons of modernist purity. Instead, Politics Unseen argues the politics of f.64's photographs become visible when interwar ideas about "purity" in the areas of eugenics, racial essence, nutrition, colonialism, and horticulture are interrogated. Ultimately, Politics Unseen alters perceptions not only of f.64, but also of what constituted a political image in 1930s America.

Product details

• Authors: Ellen Macfarlane
• Publisher: University Of California Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 07.01.2025
• EAN: 9780520399754
• ISBN: 978-0-520-39975-4
• No. of pages: 280
• Dimensions: 180 mm x 260 mm x 20 mm
• Subjects: Education and learning > Teaching preparation > Vocational needs; PHOTOGRAPHY / General, ART / History / Modern (late 19th Century to 1945), PHOTOGRAPHY / History, ART / American / General, History of Art, Art treatments & subjects, Modernism, Later 19th century c 1850 to c 1899, Early 20th century c 1900 to c 1950, Photography and photographs