Transforming Images: How Photography Complicates the Picture

Rating:
Summary: the eternal question - photography as art
Review: This is an excellent introduction to the idea of photography as realism that sets the medium in the context of other art forms and the cross-fertilisation between media. Eminently readable, here is a painless and engaging survey of the history of photography that reveals how profoundly the medium has transformed not only the appearance of artworks but our very perception of the world. An example of her approach is the way Savedoff contemplates, with nods to Berger and Benjamin, the impact that the proliferation of photographic reproductions have had on our attitude and understanding of of artworks experienced remotely and vicariously, examining more speculatively than other writers just what it is that we see and cannot see in photographs of art. Good monochrome illustrations throughout jog the memory or inspire a search for something more satisfyingly close to the original. Here's a lively and wise discussion that I have found has just the right pitch for our second year tertiary fine art photography students.