Why Photography Matters as Art as Never Before

From the late 1970s onward, serious art photography began to be made at large scale and for the wall. Michael Fried argues that this immediately compelled photographers to grapple with issues centering on the relationship between the photograph and the viewer standing before it that until then had been the province only of painting. Fried further demonstrates that certain philosophically deep problemsand#151;associated with notions ofand#160; theatricality, literalness, and objecthood, and touching on the role of original intention in artistic production, first discussed in his controandshy;versial essay and#147;Art and Objecthoodand#8221; (1967)and#151;have come to the fore once again in recent photography.and#160;This means that the photoandshy;graphic and#147;ghettoand#8221; no longer exists; instead photography is at the cutting edge of contemporary art as never before.

and#160;

Among the photographers and video-makers whose work receives serious attention in this powerfully argued book are Jeff Wall, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Cindy Sherman, Thomas Struth, Thomas Ruff, Andreas Gursky, Luc Delahaye, Rineke Dijkstra, Patrick Faigenbaum, Roland Fischer, Thomas Demand, Candida Hand#246;fer, Beat Streuli, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno, James Welling, and Bernd and Hilla Becher. Future discussions of the new art photography will have no choice but to take a stand for or against Friedand#8217;s conclusions.and#160;and#160;and#160;

and#8220;A powerfully argued book, this is the new benchmark against which future discussions of photography must stand.and#8221;and#8212;Ottawa XPress

Chosen as an Outstanding Academic Title for 2009 by Choice Magazine

"Fried . . . selects particular pictures to address and teases out the ways in which their meanings are created and transmitted. In these cases his writing is engaging, intriguing, and often delightfully paradoxical."and#8212;Andy Grundberg, American Scholar

"Fried's bookand#8212;more than any other I have readand#8212;challenges its readers to interpret more cogently the resurgence of the tableau in photographic form. The gauntlet has been tossed."and#8212;Robin Kelsey, Artforum

A renowned critic and historian offers a radically new account of the meaning of ambitious art photography since the Bechers

From the late 1970s onward, serious art photography began to be made at large scale and for the wall. Michael Fried argues that this immediately compelled photographers to grapple with issues centering on the relationship between the photograph and the viewer standing before it that until then had been the province only of painting. Fried further demonstrates that certain philosophically deep problems--associated with notions of theatricality, literalness, and objecthood, and touching on the role of original intention in artistic production, first discussed in his contro-versial essay "Art and Objecthood" (1967)--have come to the fore once again in recent photography. This means that the photo-graphic "ghetto" no longer exists; instead photography is at the cutting edge of contemporary art as never before.

Among the photographers and video-makers whose work receives serious attention in this powerfully argued book are Jeff Wall, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Cindy Sherman, Thomas Struth, Thomas Ruff, Andreas Gursky, Luc Delahaye, Rineke Dijkstra, Patrick Faigenbaum, Roland Fischer, Thomas Demand, Candida H fer, Beat Streuli, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno, James Welling, and Bernd and Hilla Becher. Future discussions of the new art photography will have no choice but to take a stand for or against Fried's conclusions.

Bertolt Brecht once worried that our sympathy for the victims of a social problem can make the problemandrsquo;s andldquo;beauty and attractionandrdquo; invisible. Inand#160;The Beauty of a Social Problem, Walter Benn Michaels explores the effort to overcome this difficulty through a study of several contemporary artist-photographers whose work speaks to questions of political economy.

Although he discusses well-known figures like Walker Evans and Jeff Wall, Michaelsandrsquo;s focus is on a group of younger artists, including Viktoria Binschtok, Phil Chang, Liz Deschenes, and Arthur Ou. All born after 1965, they have always lived in a world where, on the one hand, artistic ambition has been synonymous with the critique of autonomous form and intentional meaning, while, on the other, the struggle between capital and labor has essentially been won by capital. Contending that the aesthetic and political conditions are connected, Michaels argues that these artistsandrsquo; new commitment to form and meaning is a way for them to depict the conditions that have taken US economic inequality from its lowest level, in 1968, to its highest level today. As Michaels demonstrates, these works of art, unimaginable without the postmodern critique of autonomy and intentionality, end up departing and dissenting from that critique in continually interesting and innovative ways. and#160;

Walter Benn Michaels is professor of English at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He is the author of several books, including, most recently, The Shape of the Signifier and The Trouble with Diversity: How We Learned to Love Identity and Ignore Inequality.