The study of photography has never been more important. A look at today's digital world reveals that a greater number of photographs are being taken each day than at any other moment in history. Countless photographs are disseminated instantly online and more and more photographic images are earning prominent positions?and garnering record prices?in the rarefied realm of top art galleries.
Reflecting this dramatic increase in all things photographic, A Companion to Photography presents a comprehensive collection of original essays that explore a variety of key areas of current debate around the state of photography in the twenty-first century. Essays are grouped and organized in themed sections?including photographic interpretation, markets, popular photography, documents, and fine art?and provide comprehensive coverage of the subject. Representing a diversity of approaches, essays are written by both established and emerging photographers and scholars, as well as various experts in their respective areas.
A Companion to Photography offers scholars and professional photographers alike an essential and up-to-date resource that brings the study of contemporary photography into clear focus.
List of Figures ix
Notes on Contributors xi
Acknowledgments xvii
1 Introduction: Photography in the Twenty-first Century 1
Stephen Bull
Part I Themes 9
2 Histories 11
Sabine T. Kriebel
3 Locating Photography 29
Christopher Pinney
4 The Participation of Time in Photography 49
Anthony Luvera
5 Photographic Acts and Arts of Memory 61
Martha Langford
6 The Indexical Imagination 85
David Bate
7 The Thingness of Photographs 97
Elizabeth Edwards
8 Beyond Representation?: The Database-driven Image and the Non-human Spectator 113
Katrina Sluis
Part II Interpretation 131
9 Semiotics 133
Paul Cobley and David Machin
10 A Culture of Texts 155
Matthew Lindsey
11 Psychoanalysis and Photography: Mary Kelly and Cindy Sherman 173
Kathy Kubicki
12 Reviewing the Gaze 189
Roberta McGrath
Part III Markets 209
13 Marketing Photography: Selling Popular Photography on the British High Street 211
Annebella Pollen
14 Advertising and Photography: Rhetoric and Representation 237
Malcolm Barnard
15 Fashion's Image: The Complex World of the Fashion Photograph 253
Karen de Perthuis
16 Value Systems in Photography 275
Francis Hodgson
Part IV Popular Photography 289
17 Snapshot Photography: History, Theory, Practice, and Esthetics 291
Catherine Zuromskis
18 Mobile Photography 307
Rachel K. Gillies
19 Famous for a Fifteenth of a Second: Andy Warhol, Celebrity, and Fan Photography 329
Stephen Bull
20 Boring Pictures: Photography as Art of the Everyday 351
Clare Gallagher
Part V Documents 369
21 "Things as they are": The Problematic Possibilities of Documentary 371
Ian Walker
22 Citizens' Photojournalism: History's New First Draft 393
David Brittain
23 Seeing is not Believing: On the Irrelevance of Looking in the Age of Operational Images 411
Edward Dowsett
24 Travel Books, Photography, and National Identity in the 1950s and 1960s, Seen Through the Prism of the LIFE World Library 429
Val Williams
Part VI Art 437
25 Photography's Conflicting Modernisms and Modernities 439
Sarah E. James
26 Spectacle and Anti-spectacle: American Art Photography and Consumer Culture 465
David Campbell and Mark Durden
27 What Can Photography Do?: Considerations on Photography's Potential as Contemporary Art 483
Hilde Van Gelder
28 Practicing Desires: Authorship in Contemporary Photographic Art 501
Fergus Heron
Index 527
