Description
Price: $32.95
(as of Mar 15, 2025 06:09:26 UTC – Details)
Photography has a unique relationship to chance. Anyone who has wielded a camera has taken a picture ruined by an ill-timed blink or enhanced by an unexpected gesture or expression. Although this proneness to chance may amuse the casual photographer, Robin Kelsey points out that historically it has been a mixed blessing for those seeking to make photographic art. On the one hand, it has weakened the bond between maker and picture, calling into question what a photograph can be said to say. On the other hand, it has given photography an extraordinary capacity to represent the unpredictable dynamism of modern life. By delving into these matters, Photography and the Art of Chance transforms our understanding of photography and the work of some of its most brilliant practitioners.
The effort to make photographic art has involved a call and response across generations. From the introduction of photography in 1839 to the end of the analog era, practitioners such as William Henry Fox Talbot, Julia Margaret Cameron, Alfred Stieglitz, Frederick Sommer, and John Baldessari built upon and critiqued one another’s work in their struggle to reconcile aesthetic aspiration and mechanical process. The root problem was the technology’s indifference, its insistence on giving a bucket the same attention as a bishop and capturing whatever wandered before the lens. Could such an automatic mechanism accommodate imagination? Could it make art? Photography and the Art of Chance reveals how daring innovators expanded the aesthetic limits of photography to create art for a modern world.
ASIN : 0674744004
Publisher : Belknap Press: An Imprint of Harvard University Press; Illustrated edition (May 26, 2015)
Language : English
Hardcover : 416 pages
ISBN-10 : 9780674744004
ISBN-13 : 978-0674744004
Item Weight : 1.63 pounds
Dimensions : 6.12 x 1.4 x 9.25 inches
T. Finke –
perfect in every way
Extremely well packaged, arrived much sooner than I expected. An exceptional experience. I have ordered from them before and will order again when I am looking for a book.
Patty Alspaugh –
This is one of the best books on photography I have ever read
This is one of the best books on photography I have ever read!! It is an erudite historical study that is written ostensibly in defense of photography as art. I would like to add the following quote by Edgar Allen Poe to the author’s discussions. In Poe’s Poetic Principle (http://www.beforetheblog.com/favorites/favorites-best-trivia-party-chatter/), he states: “It is to be hoped that common-sense, in the time to come, will prefer deciding upon a work of art rather by the impression it makes, by the effect it produces, than by the time it took to produce the effect, or by the amount of ‘sustained effort’ which has been found necessary in effecting the impression.”
L. Wilkinson –
An altogether original and wonderfully engaging treatment of a subject that’s both timely (as …
An altogether original and wonderfully engaging treatment of a subject that’s both timely (as photography becomes ever-more central to life) and timeless (as understanding what we see, and what it does and doesn’t mean, is as important as it’s always been). Certainly essential for students of art and art history, but relevant to (and likely to be enjoyed by) a broader audience interested in creativity, contingency, and the powerful place of photographic imagery in our lives.
Mini –
it was like a text book
I bought this book as a gift for my niece who is majoring in photography. I never heard from my niece about the book. I guess she didn’t appreciate it. I decided to see the book at our public library. No wonder I didn’t hear from my niece, it was like a text book. When I looked through the book, I I thought it would be boring for a young student. I learned a lesson from this, never buy a book unless you’ve looked through it at first!
Acquisitions, UNLV Libraries –
No problem
No problem
Filomena Daleandro –
Excellent Book!
A scholarly analysis of photography as art. Excellent Book!!!
john weston –
Am very pleased with this book Many thanks John W