Photography: A Critical Introduction

Photography: A Critical Introduction was the first introductory textbook to examine key debates in photographic theory and place them in their social and political contexts, and is now established as one of the leading textbooks in its field. Written especially for students in further and higher education and for introductory college courses, this fully revised edition provides a coherent introduction to the nature of photographic seeing.

This revised and updated fourth edition includes:

• key concepts, biographies of major thinkers, seminal references
• a full glossary of terms, comprehensive bibliography and new chapter abstracts
• updated resource information, including guides to public archives and useful websites.

Individual chapters cover:

• key debates in photographic theory and history
• documentary photography and photojournalism
• personal and popular photography
• photography and commodity culture
• photography and the human body
• photography as art
• photography in the age of electronic imaging.

This lavishly illustrated fourth edition includes 105 photographs and images, of huge diversity, in full colour throughout, featuring work from Bill Brandt, Susan Derges, Rineke Dijkstra, Lee Friedlander, Fran Herbello, Hannah Höch, Karen Knorr, Dorothea Lange, Chrystal Lebas, Lee Miller, Martin Parr, Ingrid Pollard, Jacob Riis, Alexander Rodchenko, Andres Serrano and Jeff Wall.

Liz Wells is Professor in Photographic Culture in the Faculty of Arts, University of Plymouth.

Her teaching and research covers photography history, theory, criticism; contemporary photographic practices; Independent and Experimental Film and Video, with a special interest in landscape photography.

Editorial Advisory Group member , Visual Communications, Sage

Editorial Advisory Group member, Visual Culture in Britain, University of Manchester Press.

Along with David Bate and Martin Lister, Liz Wells is currently working on a new Routledge Journal, ‘Photographies’, which will launch early 2008.