Photography: A Critical Introduction was the first introductory textbook to examine key debates in photographic theory and place them in their social and political contexts, and is now established as one of the leading textbooks in its field. Written especially for students in further and higher education and for introductory college courses, this fully revised edition provides a coherent introduction to the nature of photographic seeing. This revised and updated fourth edition includes: key concepts, biographies of major thinkers, seminal references a full glossary of terms, comprehensive bibliography and new chapter abstracts updated resource information, including guides to public archives and useful websites. Individual chapters cover: key debates in photographic theory and history documentary photography and photojournalism personal and popular photography photography and commodity culture photography and the human body photography as art photography in the age of electronic imaging. This lavishly illustrated fourth edition includes 105 photographs and images, of huge diversity, in full colour throughout, featuring work from Bill Brandt, Susan Derges, Rineke Dijkstra, Lee Friedlander, Fran Herbello, Hannah Hoch, Karen Knorr, Dorothea Lange, Chrystal Lebas, Lee Miller, Martin Parr, Ingrid Pollard, Jacob Riis, Alexander Rodchenko, Andres Serrano and Jeff Wall.

About the Author

Liz Wells is Professor in Photographic Culture in the Faculty of Arts, University of Plymouth. Her teaching and research covers photography history, theory, criticism; contemporary photographic practices; Independent and Experimental Film and Video, with a special interest in landscape photography. Editorial Advisory Group member , Visual Communications, Sage Editorial Advisory Group member, Visual Culture in Britain, University of Manchester Press. Along with David Bate and Martin Lister, Liz Wells is currently working on a new Routledge Journal, 'Photographies', which will launch early 2008.

Table of Contents

Notes on contributors Editor's preface Acknowledgements Illustration acknowledgements Introduction 1 Thinking about photography: debates, historically and now DERRICK PRICE and LIZ WELLS Introduction Aesthetics and technologies The impact of new technologies Art or technology? The photograph as document Photography and the modern The postmodern Contemporary debates What is theory? Photography theory Critical reflections on realism Reading the image Photography reconsidered Theory, criticism, practice Case study: Image analysis: the example of Migrant Mother 00 Histories of photography Which founding father? The photograph as image History in focus Photography and social history Social history and photography The photograph as testament Categorical photography Institutions and contexts The museum The archive 2 Surveyors and surveyed: photography out and about DERRICK PRICE Introduction Documentary and photojournalism: issues and definitions Documentary photography Photojournalism Documentary and authenticity The real and the digital Surveys and social facts Victorian surveys and investigations Photographing workers Photography within colonialism Photography and war Bearing witness The construction of documentary Picturing ourselves The Farm Security Administration (FSA) Discussion: Drum Documentary: New cultures, new spaces Theory and the critique of documentary Cultural politics and everyday life The real world in colour Documentary and photojournalism in the global age 3 'Sweet it is to scan ...': personal photographs and popular photography PATRICIA HOLLAND Introduction In and beyond the charmed circle of home The public and the private in personal photography Beyond the domestic Fiction and fantasy Portraits and albums Informality and intimacy The working classes picture themselves Kodak and the mass market The supersnap in Kodaland Paths unholy and deeds without a name? Twenty-first-century contemplations Post-family and post-photography? And in the galleries ... Acknowledgements 4 The subject as object: photography and the human body MICHELLE HENNING Introduction The photographic body in crisis Embodying social difference Objects of desire and disgust Objectification, fetishism, voyeurism The anti-pornography campaigns Photography and homoerotic desire Class, commodities, 'real' bodies Case study: La Cicciolina Technological bodies The camera as mechanical eye Interventions and scientific images The body as machine Digital imaging and the malleable body Photography, birth and death Summary 5 Spectacles and illusions: photography and commodity culture ANANDI RAMAMURTHY Introduction: the society of the spectacle Photographic portraiture and commodity culture Photojournalism, glamour and the paparrazzi Commercial photography, image banks and corporate media Commodity spectacles in advertising photography The grammar of the ad Case study: The commodification of human relations and experience -- Telenor Mobile TV, 'Everywhere' The photographic message The transfer of meaning The creation of meaning through context and photographic styles Hegemony in photographic representation Photomontage: concealing social relations Concealing labour relations Gender, fashion and the gaze Fashion photography Case study: Tourism, fashion and 'the Other' The context of the image Image worlds Case study: Benetton, Toscanini and the limits of advertising 6 On and beyond the white walls: photography as art LIZ WELLS Introduction The status of the photograph as art Early debates and practices The complex relations between photography and art Realism and systems of representation Photography extending art Photography claiming a place in the gallery The modern era Modernism and Modern Art Modern photography Photo-eye: new ways of seeing Case study: Art, design, politics: Soviet Constructivism American formalism Case study: Art movements and intellectual currencies: Surrealism Late twentieth-century perspectives Conceptual art and the photographic Photography and the postmodern Women's photography Questions of identity Identity and the multi-cultural Photography within the institution Appraising the contemporary Curators, collectors and festivals Internationalism: festivals and publishing The gallery as context Case study: Landscape as genre 7 Photography in the age of electronic imaging MARTIN LISTER Introduction The early 1990s and worries about the truth The humanist response The humanist subject Techno-progressivism Media archaeology and other histories of photography Further critical issues Reception Theory and practice Virtual, hybrid, networked The virtual image Kodak and Nokia Citizen (photo)journalist Surveillance Archives and digital image banks Glossary Photography archives Bibliography Index