Why It Does Not Have To Be In Focus
Modern Photography Explained
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Thames & Hudson Ltd
Published:16th Sep '13
£14.99
Available for immediate dispatch.
An engaging, thoroughgoing and enlightening reappraisal of contemporary photography that shows that there’s much more to the art of photography than just pointing and clicking
Choosing 100 key photographs, the author examines what inspired each photographer in the first place, and traces how the piece was executed. She brings to light the layers of meaning and artifice behind these singular works, some of which were initially dismissed out of hand for being blurred.Why take a self-portrait but obscure your face with a lightbulb (Lee Friedlander, Provincetown, Cape Cod, Massachusetts (1968)? Or deliberately underexpose an image (Vera Lutter, Battersea Power Station, XI: July 13 , 2004)? And why photograph a ceiling (William Eggleston, Red Ceiling , 1973)? In Why It Does Not Have To Be In Focus , Jackie Higgins offers a lively, informed defence of modern photography. Choosing 100 key photographs – with particular emphasis on the last twenty years – she examines what inspired each photographer in the first place, and traces how the piece was executed. In doing so, she brings to light the layers of meaning and artifice behind these singular works, some of which were initially dismissed out of hand for being blurred, overexposed or ‘badly’ composed. The often controversial works discussed in this book play with our expectations of a photograph, our ingrained tendency to believe that it is telling us the unadorned truth. Jackie Higgins’s book proves once and for all that there’s much more to the art of photography than just pointing and clicking.
'A great book – inventive, and persuasively argued' - Amateur Photographer
'If you’re after a pocket primer in contemporary art photography, 'Why It Does Not Have to Be In Focus' offers an incisive starting point' - Daily Telegraph
ISBN: 9780500290958
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: 490g
224 pages