The Digital Eye: Photographic Art in the Electronic Age

Sylvia Wolf

Hardcover | 19.5 x 1.8 x 24 cm | 192 pp

Prestel | 2010 | 9783791343181

The rise of digital photography is perhaps the most manifest legacy of the digital revolution in art. Through the use of sophisticated software and scanners, artists are able to enhance photographs, saturate them with colour, and create mesmerising effects. Focusing exclusively on digital photography and its enormous varieties of technique and style, Sylvia Wolf explores a genre that challenges our notions of the art and the role of the artist.

This lavishly illustrated book takes readers from the earliest experiments in digital photography to the latest innovations. Wolf candidly discusses issues of authenticity and narrative and points to technological trends of the future. A global panoply of artists, including Andreas Gursky, Chris Jordan, Loretta Lux, and Lucas Samaras, demonstrates just how diverse and complex the field has become. Today as digital photography is being used by artists to portray unbridled consumption and warn of ecological disaster; as artists employ Photoshop, Google and their own programming skills to create software-cum-art objects; and as seasoned photographers turn from film to their laptops, this volume offers a riveting snapshot of a medium that is changing the way we look at pictures.