The photograph as contemporary art
From conceptual arts use of the banal and artless snapshot to the carefully constructed tableaux of Jeff Wall, this book considers the full range of ways that todays artists engage with photography to make art.
Some artists, such as Sophie Calle and Erwin Wurm, use photography as a record of performances or everyday actions, while others like Yinka Shonibare and Gregory Crewdson stage invented scenes to tell fictional stories. Andreas Gursky, Thomas Demand and Rineke Dijkstra present a cool, seemingly objective view of the world, while Nan Goldin and Wolfgang Tillmans offer up intimate details of their private lives. For Luc Delahaye and Allan Sekula, photography is a means of creating documentary, while for Cindy Sherman and Gillian Wearing, the photograph becomes a repository of personal, social and cultural values in an image-saturated world.
This new edition brings the story of contemporary art photography up to date with a new chapter on artists who emphasize the physical and material properties of photography, who use photography as just one component in their pan-media practice, or who experiment with new modes of dissemination.
Featuring established artists such as Isa Genzken and Sherrie Levine alongside a younger generation including Florian Maier-Aichen, Anne Collier and Walead Beshty, The Photograph as Contemporary Art points to the durability, diversity and energy of art photography in the twenty-first century.
Charlotte Cotton is Creative Director of the National Media Museum, UK. She was formerly head of programming at the Photographers’ Gallery, London.
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