Exploring Color Photography is a flexible, multiple duty text that clearly and concisely instructs students in the fundamental aesthetic and technical concepts needed to create thought provoking photographs in both the digital and the analogue processes. This conceptual approach will not be rapidly outdated, nor will it get students bogged down in complex technical matters. Coverage of Light, Design, Color, Movement, Time, and Space, and Presentation is pertinent to all levels of photographic education.
A comprehensive, diverse, high-quality art program stresses a multitude of approaches through its inspiring visual examples and well-structured illustrative informational charts and tables.
Exploring Color Photography's thoughtful assignments encourage students to be adventurous and to take responsibility for learning and working independently. The emphasis on design and postmodern theoretical concepts stresses the thought process behind the creation of successful images. Image captions give insight into how imagemakers apply technology in the service of their ideas. A "Problem Solving and Writing" chapter offers methods and exercises that help students learn to be visual problem solvers and to talk and write succinctly about the ideas at the foundation of their work.
From the journal Afterimage, November/December 2004, page 15:
"A textbook for college-level students and serious amateurs with a historical and pragmatic approach. Theory is related to practice and it is abundantly illustrated by original works form various sources and many professional practitioners and artists. The digital section has been expanded. Hirsch accompanies his "lectures" with creative assignments for the reader to complete."
Robert Hirsch is an artist, author, curator, and educator.
Hirsch is the author of Seizing the Light: A History of Photography; Exploring Color Photography: From the Darkroom to the Digital Studio published by McGraw-Hill and Photographic Possibilities: The Expressive Use of Ideas, Materials, and Processes published by Focal Press.
He is a former associate editor for Photovision magazine and is a contributing writer for Afterimage, Digital Photography (UK), exposure, Ilford Photo Newsletter, and The Photo Review.
He was the Executive Director and Chief Curator of the Center for Exploratory and Perceptual Art (CEPA Gallery) in Buffalo, NY.
Hirsch is on the art faculty of SUNY Buffalo and teaches history of photography online through Eastern New Mexico University.
Recently his images have been shown at: University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM; Vermont Center for Photography, Brattleboro, VT; Artspace, New Haven, CT; Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; George Eastman House, Rochester, NY; Williamsburg Art & Historical Center, Brooklyn, NY; Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY; Contemporary Museum, Baltimore, MD; and Stefan Stux Gallery, NY, NY.
