Photography and the Artist's Book

This important publication provides a broad international perspective, bringing together writers from Australia, Germany, Ireland, the UK and the USA - both leading theorists and leading practitioners - to more fully explore the issues raised by the relationship of photography with the artist’s book. Among the artists whose work is explored are Francesca Woodman, Fiona Tan, Tacita Dean, Adam Murray/Preston is my Paris, and many more. The work of many of the artists discussed is also illustrated.

There is a renewed interest in the relationship of photography and the artist’s book, both as a work of art and as an alternative means of exhibition and dissemination. There is also a notable expansion in the activities of self-publication by photographers and artists who use the photograph. Furthermore, the theorising of the photographic essay, and notions of "conceptual documentary", have become important areas of discourse for practitioners and theorists alike who are interested in working with the photograph in book form.

Also available: The Photograph and The Album and The Reflexive Photographer.

1. Introduction
The Development of Photography and Artists’ Books: Exploring Manchester Metropolitan University’s Artist’s Book Collection
Jane Pendlebury, MMU Special Collections and Theresa Wilkie, University of Salford

2. The Photographic Essay, Photographic Novel and other Narrative Forms
Imaginary Shadows: Fictional Documentary Photography in Artists’ Books
Sarah Bodman, Book Arts, University of the West of England

Artists and Albums
Logan Sisley, Dublin City Gallery, The Hugh Lane

Photographs, Notebooks, Interiority: Francesca Woodman's Artist's Books
Jane Simon, Macquarie University, Australia

Book, Exhibition, Lecture: Revisiting Catharsis: Images of Post-Conflict Belfast 2008-12
Angela Kelly, Rochester Institute of Technology, USA

Artist Photo Books: Photo Books — Artist Books
Sylvia Borda

3. Sequence, Seriality and Typology
Space-Time-Fragment: Conceptual Documentary Photography in the Artist's Book as a Tool of Analysis
Elizabeth Neudörfl, Folkwang University, Essen, Germany

Pictures of Things and Things that are Pictures: Artistic Research and its Document as Artist’s Book
David Penny, MIRIAD, Manchester Metropolitan University

4. Audience: Zines, Multiples and Limited Editions
Reinstating Touch in the Documentary Photobook
Tim Daly, University of Chester

PPP: Preston, Paris, Process
Adam Murray, University of Central Lancashire & Preston is my Paris and Diane Smyth, British Journal of Photography

Print/Screen: Current and Future Dissemination of the Self-Published Artists’ Book
Adam Verity, University of Lincoln

A Memory of a Memory
Lawrence Giles, University of Salford

Theresa Wilkie is an independent educator, writer and editor working in the field of photography, with a particular interest in practice in the context of theory and history.

Jonathan Carson is Associate Dean Academic (Enhancement) and Senior Lecturer in Critical & Contextual Studies in the School of Arts & Media, University of Salford. 

Rosie Miller is one half of the creative partnership Carson & Miller who, since 2000, have produced a number of artists’ books now in the collections of museums and galleries internationally; she is Critical & Contextual Studies Area Leader in the School of Arts & Media, University of Salford, UK. 

The book is the natural habitat of the photograph. It is where photographs want to live. It is where they feel at home. During the decades that photography struggled to gain respectability as an art, photographs had to endure the indignity of trying to fight for visibility on the gallery wall. But photographs by their nature are best seen and appreciated by a comfortably seated viewer looking unhurriedly at the pages of a book. Now that photography can come down from the wall and regain its natural footing, it is fitting that we should begin to re-examine the medium of the book as a repository for photography as art. Photography and the Artist’s Book is a welcome set of thoughtful meditations on the subject, and a must-read for anyone interested in the future of the photo book.
Frank Cost, James E. McGhee Distinguished Professor, School of Photographic Arts & Sciences, Rochester Institute of Technology.

This volume offers a thorough critical engagement with the relationship between photography and the artist’s book. It involves a wide range of perspectives – from visual essay and practical art approaches to theoretical and historical 
analyses – which enter into new and interesting 
dialogues with each other.
Patricia Allmer, Senior Research Fellow in Art History and Theory, 
Manchester School of Art (MMU), 
and author of Rene Magritte: Beyond Painting.

Title: Photography and The Artist’s Book
Editors: Theresa Wilkie, Jonathan Carson, Rosie Miller
Pages: 350
Illustrations: 56
Size: 203 x 127mm
Date: 2012
Editions: £34.95 [paperback] | £24.95 [eBook]
ISBN: 978-1-907697-50-0 [paperback]

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Guarantee: We offer all our readers an unconditional guarantee: if, at any time, you decide this book’s not for you, simply return it to us for a full and prompt refund. 


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