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Since its introduction nearly 200 years ago, photography has become part of everyday life, a position consolidated by the recent development of digital imaging and manipulation. Used to confirm identity, to sell products, to reshape the real, to visualize the news, to record and communicate the personal moment, and as an art form in its own right, photography is now one of the most accessible and pervasive of media. Photography: The Key Concepts provides an ideal guide to the place of photography in our society and to the extraordinary range of photographic genres. Outlining the history of photography and explaining the body of theory which has built up around its use, the book leads the reader through the genres of documentary, portraiture, landscape, still life, art and global photography. Illustrated with a range of historical and contemporary images and case material, this book is essential reading for anyone interested in photography.
List of contents
CONTENTS
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Genre
Approaches
Introduction Summary
1 History
Definitions
Historical Problems
The History of Photography
Photography as Discourse
Photographs as Historical Objects
Historical Example
Photographic Knowledge
Plural Meanings
Chapter Summary
2 Photography Theory
A Short History of Photography Theory
Theory of Representation
The Language of Photography
Points of View
Denotation - The Visual Signifiers
Connotations - The Cultural Signified
Realism and Reality
Poststructuralism
Chapter Summary
3 Documentary and Story-telling
Editorial Control
Auteur Photographers
Democratic Vision
How the Other Half Lives
Reportage
'Decisive Moment' as Peripateia
Staging Reality
Eyewitness
Reality and Representation
Desire to See
Colour Documentary
Tableaux on the Street
Chapter Summary
4 Looking at Portraits
Identity
The Industrial Portrait
Mass Portraiture
Bureaucratic Portraits
Elements of a Portrait
'Reading' Portraits
Recognition
Identification
Narcissism and Looking
Projection
The Blank Expression
Chapter Summary
5 In the Landscape
Vision and Knowledge
History of Landscape
Beauty and the Sublime
Photographic Vision
Exploration
Aesthetics of Description
Composure
Panoramas
Conclusion
Chapter Summary
6 The Rhetoric of Still Life
Advertising
Critique of Advertising
Advertising Agency
Social Fantasy
Product Shots
Techniques
The Art of Description
Still-life Sub-genres
Hyperbole
The New Objectivity
Rhetoric of the Image
The Object Image
Chapter Summary
7 Art Photography
Art
Autonomy
Mediums
Painting and Photography
Paradigms
Photography in Contemporary Art
The Pictorial Paradigm
Conceptual Art
Street Photography
'Fine art' photography
Postmodernism
Art as Global Industry
Chapter Summary
8 Global Photography
The Globalization of Photography
The Flow of Photography
World Photography
Critique of Universalism
Local Readings
The World Wide Web
The Digital Photograph
Image Dissemination
Chapter Summary
Questions for Essays and Class Discussion
Annotated Guide for Further Reading
Notes
Select Bibliography
Index
Report
Photography: The Key Concepts, brilliantly engages students in the essential theoretical debates around contemporary photography. While not shying away from the necessity for the serious study of theory, not least in the core approaches of semiotics and psychoanalysis, it strikes just the right balance between erudition and plain explanation. Michael O'Brien, Roehampton University
