Photography After Conceptual A - Paperback

by Diarmuid Costello (Editor), Margaret Iversen (Editor)

Photography After Conceptual Art presents a series of original essays that address substantive theoretical, historical, and aesthetic issues raised by post-1960s photography as a mainstream artistic medium

• Selected by Choice as an Outstanding Academic Title for 2011
• Appeals to people interested in artist's use of photography and in contemporary art
• Tracks the efflorescence of photography as one of the most important mediums for contemporary art
• Explores the relation between recent art, theory and aesthetics, for which photography serves as an important test case
• Includes a number of the essays with previously unpublished photographs
• Artists discussed include Ed Ruscha, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Douglas Huebler, Mel Bochner, Sherrie Levine, Roni Horn, Thomas Demand, and Jeff Wall

Back Jacket

Although many believe that photography has emerged as post-conceptual art's pre-eminent medium, there is as yet little consensus about the state of contemporary photographic art. What exactly is at stake? Photography After Conceptual Art presents a series of original essays that address substantive theoretical, historical, and aesthetic issues raised by post 1960s photography as a mainstream artistic medium - particularly in light of the oft-heard critique of the arts' 'post-medium' condition. Contributions trace photographic art's remarkable transformation from the 'non-aesthetic' uses of the medium associated with various conceptual and post-conceptual practices of the 1960s and 70s to the large scale pictorial colour images that have dominated the medium since the 90s. The theoretical and aesthetic implications of this historical metamorphosis are considered from a number of conflicting theoretical perspectives. Among the influential artists discussed are Ed Ruscha, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Douglas Huebler, Mel Bochner, Sherrie Levine, Roni Horn, Thomas Demand, and Jeff Wall - whose work is considered from the perspectives of Martin Heidegger, Theodor Adorno, Gilles Deleuze, Roland Barthes, and Michael Fried, and several others. Photography After Conceptual Art offers an insightful and illuminating snapshot of the current state of debate in the realm of photographic art.

Author Biography

Diarmuid Costello is Associate Professor of Philosophy, University of Warwick. He co-edited (with Dominic Willsdon) The Life and Death of Images: Ethics and Aesthetics (2008), and (with Jonathan Vickery) Art Key Contemporary Thinkers (2007). His articles have appeared in British Journal of Aesthetics, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Critical Inquiry, Rivista di Estetica, and Angelaki.

Margaret Iversen is Professor of Art History and Theory, University of Essex. Her books include Beyond Pleasure: Freud, Lacan, Barthes (2007); Alois Riegl: Art History and Theory (1993); Mary Kelly, co-authored with Douglas Crimp and Homi Bhabha (1997). Writing Art History, co-authored with Stephen Melville, is forthcoming.

Iversen and Costello are also Co-Directors of the AHRC research project "Aesthetics after Photography."