Synopses & Reviews
This innovative collection demonstrates the profound effects of feeling on our experiences and understanding of photography. It includes essays on the tactile nature of photos, the relation of photography to sentiment and intimacy, and the ways that affect pervades the photographic archive. Concerns associated with the affective turnandmdash;intimacy, alterity, and ephemerality, as well as queerness, modernity, and lossandmdash;run through the essays. At the same time, the contributions are informed by developments in critical race theory, postcolonial studies, and feminist theory. As the contributors bring affect theory to bear on photography, some interpret the work of contemporary artists, such as Catherine Opie, Tammy Rae Carland, Christian Boltanski, Marcelo Brodsky, Zoe Leonard, and Rea Tajiri. Others look back, whether to the work of the American Pictorialist F. Holland Day or to the discontent masked by the smiles of black families posing for cartes de visite in a Kodak marketing campaign. With more than sixty photographs, including twenty in color, this collection changes how we see, think about, and feel photography, past and present.
Contributors. Elizabeth Abel, Elspeth H. Brown, Kimberly Juanita Brown, Lisa Cartwright, Lily Cho, Ann Cvetkovich, David L. Eng, Marianne Hirsch, Thy Phu, Christopher Pinney, Marlis Schweitzer, Dana Seitler, Tanya Sheehan, Shawn Michelle Smith, Leo Spitzer, Diana Taylor
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Review
andquot;Feeling Photography is a major book. I donand#39;t know of any other collection quite like it. In rigorous, passionate, provocative, and cogent essays, the contributors provide a new way of thinking about visual culture as an affective, and not just ocular, experience.andquot;
Review
"This fascinating, important collection of essays by eminent thinkers is a timely one, sure to appeal to the many scholars interested in theories of affect and the history and theory of photography. I truly admire this book, and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it." Carol Mavor, author of Black and Blue: The Bruised Passion of Camera Lucida, La Jet�e, Sans Soleil, and Hiroshima Mon Amour
Review
andquot;This fascinating, important collection of essays by eminent thinkers is a timely one, sure to appeal to the many scholars interested in theories of affect and the history and theory of photography. I truly admire this book, and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it.andquot;
Review
andquot;I found it a fascinating read. To my knowledge, the book is unique in its coverage of this perspective on photography, and I would recommend this book for anyone interested in photography and visual culture on a theoretical level. Very useful for undergraduate and graduate studies in fine arts, visual culture, gender studies, and, obviously, photography.andquot;
Synopsis
With more than sixty photographs, including twenty in color, changes how we see, think about, and feel photography, past and present. It includes essays on the tactile nature of photos, the relation of photography to sentiment and intimacy, and the ways that affect pervades the photographic archive.
About the Author
Elspeth H. Brown is Associate Professor of History at the University of Toronto. She is the author of
The Corporate Eye: Photography and the Rationalization of American Commercial Culture, 1884andndash;1929.
Thy Phu is Associate Professor of English at Western University in London, Ontario. She is the author of Picturing Model Citizens: Civility in Asian American Visual Culture.