Photography - History, Theory & Criticism

Is the exhibition now made for the photograph? Image of an Exhibition examines this question through a series of commissioned works, writing, panel discussions and interviews that took place over a number of events in 2015. The publication documents this process providing insight into...

The second book of the RIC Books series co-published by the MIT Press and The Image Centre at Toronto Metropolitan University, explores the interaction of aesthetics and politics in Bertolt Brecht's “photoepigrams.” From 1938 to 1955, Bertolt Brecht created montages of images and text, filling...

Wirephoto is the sending of photographs by telegraph, telephone or radio. David Pace and Stephen Wirtz manipulate and transform wirephotos transmitted during World War II. Beginning with an extensive collection of originals assembled by Wirtz over a period of many years, they scan the...

Photographer Robert Burley has traveled the world documenting the abandonment and destruction of film-based photography, namely, the factories where film was produced and the labs that developed it. The atmospheric large-format photographs transport viewers to rarely seen sites where the alchemy of the photographic...

The daguerreotype, invented in France, came to America in 1839. By 1851, this early photographic method had been improved by American daguerreotypists to such a degree that it was often referred to as “the American process.” The daguerreotype - now perhaps mostly associated with...

Relief Journal is a project that documents the space between making and exhibiting, concentrating on the intersection of art and curatorial practice with politics. Each issue is themed and contributors are invited to respond. Class is the theme for this first issue for which...

Relief is a journal that documents the space between making and exhibiting, concentrating on the intersection of art and curatorial practice with politics. The theme of issue is Drift, a modern take on the dérive, a term popularised by Guy Debord and adopted by...

Relief is a journal that documents the space between making and exhibiting, concentrating on the intersection of art and curatorial practice with politics. Issue 3 examines the theme of Surface and the gestures and histories contained within them. A surface is the point at...

Autochromes were the first commercial colour photographs. Invented in 1904 by the Lumière brothers Auguste and Louis in Paris, colour photographs caused a great sensation at the time. They were an innovation and the first way to depict the world in true-to-life colour and...

Walker Evans (1903–75) was a great American artist photographing people and places in the United States in unforgettable ways. He is known for his work for the Farm Security Administration, addressing the Great Depression, but what he actually saw was the diversity of people...

A biography of the elusive but celebrated Dada and Surrealist artist and photographer connecting his Jewish background to his life and artMan Ray (1890–1976), a founding father of Dada and a key player in French Surrealism, is one of the central artists of the...

Inspired by John Szarkowski’s 1973 Looking at Photographs, and paying homage to it's concept of one hundred images with a page of text for each, Stephen Frailey here updates this classic with significant works of photography from early 80s to the present. Looking at Photography...

Photography Inc. relates the story of photography and the photography industry from its earliest days to the present. Photography began as a craft. A photograph was a luxury item. Later, it became a mass product for a democratic market. Automation, commerce and consumers all played their part. Manufacturers followed...

This is the first comprehensive overview about a talented 20th-century writer, photographer, and “builder” of books who greatly impacted architecture appreciation in America and beyond. George Everard Kidder Smith (1913–1997) produced a remarkable corpus of beautifully illustrated books, primarily about modern buildings and sites. His...

Russell "Russ" Melcher came to Europe and photographed the superstars of the time, either during their visits to Paris and France or accompanied them on worldwide trips. He witnessed many world events, from film festivals to terrorist attacks. Among the portrayed were royal families...

The One Work series is a library of small books, each title focusing on a single artwork that has significantly shaped the way we understand art and its history. An examination of one of Walker Evans's iconic photographs of the Great Depression. Kitchen Corner,...

Photographer Eugène Atget is best known as a chronicler of a romantic, if disappearing, Paris around the turn of the 20th century. This book presents a series of postcards depicting Paris’s petits métiers, or little trades, exploring another side to Atget’s oeuvre. More or...

Written by Marta Weiss, Curator of Photographs at the V&A, Making It Up: Photographic Fictions shows how, throughout its history, photography has been used to depict fiction as well as fact. With over 130 photographs supported by extended commentaries and an introduction, Making It Up: Photographic Fictions illustrates...

ANIMALS presents an innovative and insightful look at our relationship with animals in the age of the Anthropocene from bestselling author Henry Carroll with original images from an innovative array of contemporary photographers. In this second book of the series, Carroll deep-dives into an...

How do the most diverse and relevant voices of contemporary photography respond to the urgent issues of today?  Henry Carroll, the bestselling photography writer of the last decade, unpacks the ideas behind images to reflect on race, gender, faith, inequality, beauty, politics, and our...