Making It Up: Photographic Fictions

Marta Weiss

Hardcover | 20.3 x 2.5 x 25.7 cm | 192 pp

Thames & Hudson | 2018 | 9780500480373

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 that, though we often recognise the staged, constructed or the tableau as a feature of contemporary art photography, this way of working is almost as old as the practice itself.

Presenting work from the earliest through to the most contemporary of photographers, Making It Up: Photographic Fictions puts paid to the fallacy that the camera never lies , proving that quite the opposite may be true. Remarkable in themselves, these photographic fictions, whether created by early practitioners such as Lewis Carroll or Roger Fenton, internationally renowned artists such as Cindy Sherman and Jeff Wall, or contemporary figures such as Hannah Starkey and Bridget Smith, find new and intriguing relevance in our so-called post-truth age.