4 November 2008 | Photography
Rémi Coignet, who blogs about photography and books for Le Monde, recently reviewed Playboy: Posters, La collection complète, which is a kind of catalogue raisonné comprising all the hundreds of centerfolds the magazine has published since 1953: Flipping through the work, you get an impression of great repetition, an impression confirmed by a quick tally [...]
5 March 2008 | Americas, Photography
The Fall 2007 issue of American Art contains five commentaries on photography. Anthony W. Lee writes: More than most fields, the history of photography is mercurial and eclectic in its interests and methods. This is partly because its subject has continually proved to be a moving target (even the earliest inventors could not agree what [...]
17 January 2008 | Photography
From Le Monde: It’s a stunning photograph that has caused much ink to be spilled since it was published January 3rd on the cover of the Nouvel Observateur. On the occasion of the centenary of Simone de Beauvoir’s birth, the magazine chose an image of the writer, nude, seen from behind, in the middle of [...]
3 January 2008 | Photography
A recent issue (29.2) of Studies in American Culture includes an essay by Larry Vonalt (who died in 2005) on “The Dignity of Shelby Lee Adams’s ‘Disturbing’ Family Photograph’: The photographs in Shelby Lee Adams’s first two monographs, Appalachian Portraits (1993) and Appalachian Legacy (1998), attracted praise and, often in his native Eastern Kentucky, blame. [...]
18 December 2007 | Photography, Theory
In the October 2007 Text and Performance Quarterly, Ruth Laurion Bowman, Melanie Kitchens, and Linda Shkreli contribute “FEMAture Evacuation: A Parade“: On February 25, 2006, the Society for the Preservation of Lagniappe in Louisiana (SPLL) hosted the twenty-sixth Annual Spanish Town Mardi Gras Parade in downtown Baton Rouge … The 2006 theme, FEMAture Evacuation, took [...]
10 December 2007 | Books, Photography
Writing in Le Monde des livres, Michel Guerrin recently panned the new 620-page survey L’Art de la photographie, edited by André Gunthert and Michel Poivert. The editors respond: Michel Guerrin has published … a methodical assassination of L’Art de la photographie. Everything gets it. From the “chilling” price to the deceitful cover. “Grand masters” are [...]
26 November 2007 | Photography, Theory
The summer 2007 issue of new formations is devoted to Siegfried Kracauer. Edtior Jan Campbell writes that his “contribution to twentieth century thought is undeniable. Yet he is difficult to define in relation to any particular tradition or discipline of knowledge.” Some of Kracauer’s writings concern photography: In his famous Photography essay Kracauer reveals how [...]
15 November 2007 | Photography
German art historian Siegfried Wichmann has found evidence that “Mad King” Ludwig II of Bavaria died not of suicide but of murder. From the Independent: He was gay, wildly eccentric and built fairytale castles that today rate as Germany’s leading tourist attractions – but more than a century ago “Mad King” Ludwig II of Bavaria [...]
31 October 2007 | Photography, Theory
Also in the Spring 2007 Biography is an essay by Susan Bruce on author Siegfried Sassoon’s autobiographical writings: [I] advance the argument that the advent of photography changes our perception of ourselves in time … its most fundamental and melancholy legacy. The advent of photography ushers in an age in which we are at once [...]
18 October 2007 | Photography
Soon to appear: two new journals devoted to the study of photography: Photography and Culture and Photographies. It’s hard to learn much about Photographies from its vaguely written press release [pdf here], except that it’s edited by David Bate, Sarah Kember, Martin Lister, and Liz Wells. Photography and Culture, according to its press release, aims [...]
12 October 2007 | Photography, Theory
In the Autumn 2007 issue of History of Photography, editor Peggy Ann Kusnerz writes: This issue of History of Photography brings together an assortment of essays about individual photographers and their work. These essays are not ‘histories’ in the tradition of Scottish political philosopher Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881). His type of writing, called ‘Great Man History’, [...]
18 May 2007 | Photography
In a recent article by master’s journalism student John Mitchell, philosopher Robert Sokolowski muses on photography: What is a photograph, anyway? At a time when Adobe Photoshop allows designers to cut, crop, rotate, resize, recolor, and reconstitute any image they please, it’s not always so easy to tell. Sokolowski says the difference between a photograph [...]
14 May 2007 | Conferences, Photography
In the most recent issue of History of Photography (30:4), Allison Moore contributes a report from the symposium “Picturing Atrocity: Photography in Crisis,” a recording of which is available online: As soon as the panels began, the need to define atrocity became apparent. Is war in itself an atrocity, or is it only an excess [...]
3 May 2007 | Journals, Photography
The most recent issue of Arena Journal (no. 27), “a place for theoretically and ethically concerned discussion about the prospects for co-operation within contemporary life,” several authors examine the importance of visual images in contemporary politics. Karen Crinall contributes “Destitute Discourses: The Art of Orchestrating Fear and Fantasy in Photographs of Homeless People,” in which [...]
26 February 2007 | Journals, Photography, Theory
In language that recalls the recent CAA panel devoted to the definition of architecture, the Spring 2007 issue of History of Photography devoted to “hybridity” argues in its introduction that “our postmodern age has transformed hybridity (both the process and the result) into one of its master codes, and perhaps even into one of its [...]
8 January 2007 | Books, Photography
In CAA Reviews, Martha Langford considers Geoffrey Batchen’s Forget Me Not: Photography and Remembrance: “Rumors of a tight relationship between photography and memory have been circulating since the nineteenth century, despite the many objections raised in both scholarly and fanciful works. A feature of these attacks is the prosecutor’s reluctance to produce evidence … we [...]
15 February 2006 | Museums, Photography
Sotheby’s New York is offering important photographs deaccessioned from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, including works by Edward Steichen, Alfred Stieglitz (including prints of “The Steerage” and “The Flat-Iron”), Walker Evans (“Tenant Farmer Wife: Allie Mae Burroughs”), and Margaret Bourke-White (“Gargoyle, Chrysler Building, New York”).
