The Photograph as Contemporary Art

Published in 2004
224 pages

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Charlotte Cotton is the curator and head of the Wallis Annenberg Department of Photography at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). Before joining the museum in 2007, Charlotte was curator of photographs at the Victoria and Albert Museum (1992-2004), the head of programming at The Photographers Gallery (2004-2005) in London. She moved to the US in 2005 and has been visiting professor at Yale University and visiting critic at colleges including Bard, SVA, Cranbrook, Otis, Art Institute Chicago, USC, and UC Riverside.

She is the author of Imperfect Beauty (2000), Guy Bourdin (2003), Then Things Went Quiet (2003) and The Photograph as Contemporary Art (2005). She is also the founding editor of wordswithoutpictures.org.

What is this book about?
The first accessible guide to the key artists and uses of photography in contemporary art since the mid-1980s. An ideal introduction to this popular subject in contemporary culture, this highly readable book surveys work by more than 150 Andreas Gursky, Nan Goldin, Philip-Lorca di Corcia, Richard Billingham, Jurgen Teller, Thomas Demand, Yinka Shonibare, Thomas Ruff, Jeff Wall, Wolfgang Tillmans, and many more. More than 200 examples of the most important works are illustrated. Themed chapters consider subjects such as narrative and storytelling in art photography, photographing the everyday and the insignificant, the use of photography in conceptual art, and the cool, detached, objective aesthetic prevalent in current art photography.