Photography : A Cultural History - Softcover

Marien, Mary Warner

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1856692884 ISBN 13: 9781856692885

Publisher: Laurence King Pub, 2002

Synopsis

This is the first survey of international photography to examine the discipline across the full range of its uses by professionals and amateurs. Each of the eight chapters takes a strict time frame of, say, fifteen to thirty years in which to examine the medium through the lenses of art, science, social science, travel, war, mass media and individual practitioners. The coverage is truly global including rarely seen work from Latin America, Africa, China, Japan, India, and Russia as well as the more established canon of Europe and the United States. Seminal figures, from Julia Margaret Cameron to Cindy Sherman, are profiled, but the emphasis is more on key ideas than individuals. So the reader follows such debates as the nature of discovery/invention, the effect of mass media on morality, the use of imagery as a tool of Western colonialism, and the role of the photograph in advertising, radical politics and family life.

About this title

From the Back Cover

Mary Warner Marien's book is interesting and provocative, and provides a new perspective on the history of photography. Each of the eight chapters takes a timeframe of between fifteen and nearly forty years in which to examine the medium through the lenses of art, science, social science, travel, war, fashion, the mass media, and individual practitioners.

These broad topics work alongside a fully developed cultural context in which the emphasis is more on key ideas than individuals. So the reader will follow debates such as the nature of invention, the effect of mass media on morality, the use of imagery as a tool of Western colonialism, and the role of the photograph in advertising, radical politics, and family life. "Focus" boxes highlight interesting cultural or controversial issues, for example "Photography and Futurism" and "Lewis Carroll's Photographs of Children." The author also pays close attention to how contemporary practitioners, commentators, and beholders have talked about specific works, the nature of photography, and the photographer's changing role in society.

In addition to representing the established canon of Europe and the United States, the book benefits from two decades of new research into non-Western photography and yields rarely seen work from Latin America, Africa, India, Russia, China, and Japan. Great names from the world over are well represented: Ansel Adams, Henri Cartier- Bresson, Louis-Jacques-Mande Daguerre, Walker Evans, Roger Fenton, Hannah Höch, Andre Kertesz, Dorothea Lange, Gustave Le Gray, Peter Magubane, Don McCullin, Alexandr Rodchenko, Cindy Sherman, Raghubir Singh, William Henry Fox Talbot, Andy Warhol, and Edward Weston. Additionally, featured in more detail in "Portrait" boxes are photographers such as Margaret Bourke-White, Mathew Brady, Manuel Alvarez Bravo, Julia Margaret Cameron, Gertrude Kasebier, Jacob Riis, August Sander, Alfred Stieglitz, and Shomei Tomatsu.

Mary Warner Marien has constructed a richer and more kaleidoscopic account of the history of photography than has previously been available. Her comprehensive survey shows compellingly how photography has sharpened, if not altered forever, our perception of the world.

About the Author

Mary Warner Marien is an associate professor in the Department of Fine Arts at Syracuse University, New York, where she teaches courses on photographic history, as well as on art criticism and its history. She is the author of Photography and its Critics (Cambridge University Press, 1997).

About this edition

• Publisher: Laurence King Pub
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 1856692884
• ISBN 13: 9781856692885
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 528