Photography theory

Abstract

Second volume in the new Routledge series "The Art Seminar" presents not one but many answers to the question what makes a photograph a photograph? Forty active art historians and theorists debate on the nature of photography. For some people, a photograph is an optically accurate impression of the world. For others, it is mainly a way of remembering people and places. For still others, it is a sign of bourgeois life, a kind of addiction of the middle class. And for yet others, it is a troublesome interloper, which has confused people's ideas of reality and fine art to the point that they have difficulty even defining what a photograph is. And for some, the whole question of finding photography's nature is itself misguided from the beginning.