The Photograph as Contemporary Art
(World of Art) by Charlotte Cotton
Great For Reference
“An essential guide.”—Seattle Post-Intelligencer For this new edition,
Charlotte Cotton brings the story of contemporary art photography up to
date with a chapter on artists who emphasize the physical and material
properties of photography, who use photography as just one component in
their pan-media practice, or who choose to experiment with new modes of
dissemination for their work. Featuring significant and established art
photographers such as Isa Genzken and Sherrie Levine alongside a
younger generation that includes Florian Maier-Aichen, Sara VanDerBeek,
and Walead Beshty, Cotton points to the diversity and energy of art
photography in this century. 210 color, 32 b&w illustrations.
Personal Review: The Photograph as Contemporary Art (World
of Art) by Charlotte Cotton

I am a photographer. I also live in New York City where I wander through
art galleries displaying photographs with which I have a hard time coming
to grips. Charlotte Cotton's book seemed to be aimed right at me.
What distinguishes a contemporary art photograph from other beautiful
photographs is not always clear, but like Supreme Court Justice Stewart, I
know it when I see it. From what the author suggests, it may be that
contemporary art photography is less concerned with the form and more
with the content, and that viewers are meant to be semiologists decoding
what a photograph stands for.
Cotton begins her book with an introduction that includes a taxonomy of
contemporary art photography, and to the extent that classifying an object
helps us to know and understand it, the introduction alone justifies the
book. Surprisingly, rather than look at style or subject matter, she
organizes the book based upon the photographers' motivations and
working practices. For example one of the classes is pictures of events
that have been specifically organized to be photographed while another is
pictures that aim to reproduce or refer back to something in the history of
photography and other arts.
Each of the classes is allocated a chapter, and allocates a paragraph each
to the work several artists, along with a representative photograph. Cotton
explains how the photograph fits into the genre and explains something of
the meaning of the work. Most of the photographs are just large enough to
provide some appreciation of the work and the explanations are as concise
as possible.
The book is meant to be a survey and so is more useful for providing a
framework for understanding the overall categories than appreciating any
individual picture. It should also be noted that the book does not cover a
great deal of recent popular photography like the works of Annie Liebovitz
or Art Wolfe. I expect that these photographers are seen as working in an
older tradition and that they are not "post modern", again, whatever that
means.
For the individual who is trying to get his arms around the direction and
meaning of much of modern art photography, as well as for people who
have dismissed contemporary art photography as unfathomable, this book
will provide a good introduction, particularly since Cotton doesn't seem to
be tied to the language of deconstruction, but rather speaks without jargon.
Yet this is a field of such great variety that even if one read all of the
hundreds of books listed by the author for further reading, one would have
only scratched the surface.
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