Photography as Contemporary Art

[pentahedron]

Have you guys heard of it?

Amazon.com: The Photograph as Contemporary Art (World of Art) (9780500204016): Charlotte Cotton: Books: Reviews, Prices & more

I checked it out at the library and the focus is the book is to emphasize how photography is quickly becoming excepted as an art medium that is comparable to other fine arts. It's printed on really nice film paper and almost every page features a photography from various photographers around the world. It has some analysis but doesn't spend a lot of time on it which is a plus. If you have it at your local library I recommend giving it a read.

[BEGM83]

It is an art medium. You can study it here up to post graduate degree level in the arts discipline.

[Izzy]

Not available in my library so I suppose I will have to buy it

I don't really need a book to tell me that photography can be art.

[pentahedron]

Originally Posted by Izzy

Not available in my library so I suppose I will have to buy it

For an photography book it's not that expensive.

I should listed the chapters since each looks at different things about a photograph but i'll copy paste from a review


Chapter 1, "If This Is Art," covers photos for which the artist has created an event prior to the shutter's being released. Among the artists discussed are Philip-Lorca diCorcia and Erwin Wurm. As a small problem, three of the photographs are reproduced at a rather small size (<15 square cm).

In Chapter 2, "Once Upon a Time," the author writes of photography in which "narrative is loaded into a single frame," which the author also calls "tableau photography." The prototypic artist here is Jeff Wall.

The next two chapters are my least favorite in the book. Chapter 3, "Deadpan," concerns a "cool, detached and keenly sharp type of photography." Many of the "deadpan" photographers, such as Andreas Gursky and Thomas Struth, were influenced by the Bechers and use large photos to convey their points. Chapter 4, "Something and Nothing," discusses still lifes, architecture, and nature shots that "push[] the boundaries of what might be considered a credible visual subject." Maybe I'm missing the point, but I fail to understand how many of the photos (e.g., of car panels in a doorway, a globe in a window, and a pink fabric bow) are artful.

Chapter 5's theme, "Intimate Life," encompasses work by photographers such as Larry Clark, Nan Goldin, and Wolfgang Tillmans. Chapter 6's theme, "Moments in History," does not relate to photojournalism, but rather to "aftermath photography" and the documentation of various groups of people in an almost anthropological fashion. If Chapter 3 suffers from the book's inability to show the photos close to their full size, Chapters 5 and 6 suffer from the book's inability to show sequences of photos by each artist.

Chapter 7, "Revived and Remade," is my favorite. This concentrates on photographs that "exploit[] our pre-existing knowledge of imagery." Works by Joan Fontcuberta, Thomas Ruff, Cindy Sherman, Gillian Wearing, and others make one think hard about the nature of photography.

And yes you don't need a book to tell you photography is art, but looking at a lot of these images amazes me at how wonderfully composed and thought out these photographers make their images.

[Jim Bryant]

One can learn a lot about lighting techniques, posing, direction of light, scenics, use of shadow and light, color in books. Books are our friends.

[pentahedron]

Originally Posted by Jim Bryant

One can learn a lot about lighting techniques, posing, direction of light, scenics, use of shadow and light, color in books. Books are our friends.

I agree. Looking at select pieces from other skilled photographers helps to train my eye so to speak so I can learn to recognize things when I'm out in my daily life that I probably would not have noticed before. I simply find much more faster and accessible than looking through google or flickr. Fortunately there are a lot more other books on photography at my library I can look through when I turn this one in

[nickbedford]

Don't forget magazines too. Better Digital are good ones. There's also the British Journal of Photography. More focused on stories than technical aspects but a good read.

[sk66]

To me it's always been an art form, but in "contemporary art" it's role seems to be expanding dramatically.
I'm all for it!

[pentahedron]

Originally Posted by nickbedford

Don't forget magazines too. Better Digital are good ones. There's also the British Journal of Photography. More focused on stories than technical aspects but a good read.

Yeah I was looking at aperture magazine a few weeks ago. Apparently a lot of photo magazines just worry about trying to sell gear so they stock them with gear ads. I may suscribe to rangefinder since that's free. And my library has the BJoP in the archives but we're allowed to check those out.