Photography does more than simply represent the world. It acts in the world, connecting people to form relationships and shaping relationships to create communities. In this beautiful book, Margaret Olin explores photography's ability to "touch" us through a series of essays that shed new light on photography's role in the world. Olin investigates the publication of photographs in mass media and literature, the hanging of exhibitions, the posting of photocopied photographs of lost loved ones in public spaces, and the intense photographic activity of tourists at their destinations. She moves from intimate relationships between viewers and photographs to interactions around larger communities, analyzing how photography affects the way people handle cataclysmic events like 9/11. Along the way, she shows us James VanDerZee's Harlem funeral portraits, dusts off Roland Barthes' family album, takes us into Walker Evans and James Agee's "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men", and logs on to online photo albums. With over one hundred illustrations, "Touching Photographs" is an insightful contribution to the theory of photography, visual studies, and art history.
- ISBN10 0226626466
- ISBN13 9780226626468
- Publish Date 21 May 2012 (first published 1 January 2012)
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country US
- Imprint University of Chicago Press
- Format Paperback
- Pages 288
- Language English
- URL http://wiley.com/remtitle.cgi?isbn=9780226626468