Photography and Exploration

Photography and Exploration
Author: James R. Ryan
Publisher: Reaktion Books
Total Pages: 194
Release: 2013-07-15
Genre: Photography
ISBN: 1780231369

When Ferdinand Magellan set out to circumnavigate the globe in 1519, he wasn’t able to bring a digital camera or a smartphone with him. Yet, as the eagerly awaited images from the Mars rover prove, modern exploration is inconceivable without photography. Since its invention in 1839, photography has been integral to exploration, used by explorers, sponsors, and publishers alike, and the early twentieth century, advances in technology—and photography’s newfound cultural currency as a truthful witness to the world—made the camera an indispensable tool. In Photography and Exploration, James R. Ryan uses a variety of examples, from polar journeys to space missions, to show how exploration photographs have been created, circulated, and consumed as objects of both scientific research and art. Examining a wide range of photographs and expeditions, Ryan considers how nations have often employed images as a means to scientific advancement or territorial conquest. He argues that because exploration has long been bound up with the construction of national and imperial identity, expeditionary photographs have often been used to promote claims to power—especially by the West. These images also challenge the way audiences perceive the world and their place within it. Featuring one hundred images, Photography and Exploration shines new light on how photography has shaped the image of explorers, expeditions, and the worlds they discovered.

Photography and Belief

Photography and Belief
Author: David Levi Strauss
Publisher: David Zwirner Books
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2020-10-27
Genre: Photography
ISBN: 9781644230473

In this exploration of contemporary photography, David Levi Strauss questions the concept that “seeing is believing” Identifying a recent shift in the dominance of photography, David Levi Strauss looks at the power of the medium in the age of Photoshop, smart phones, and the internet, asking important questions about how we look and what we trust. In the first ekphrasis title on photography, Strauss challenges the aura of believability and highlights the potential dangers around this status. He examines how images produced on cameras gradually gained an inordinate power to influence public opinion, prompt action, comfort and assuage, and direct or even create desire. How and why do we believe technical images the way we do? Offering a poignant argument in the era of “fake news,” Strauss draws attention to new changes in the technology of seeing. Some uses of "technical images" are causing the connection between images and belief (between seeing and believing) to fray and pull apart. How is this shifting our relationship to images? Will this crisis in what we can believe come to threaten our very purchase on the real? This book is an inquiry into the history and future of our belief in images.

Revealing the Holy Land

Revealing the Holy Land
Author: Kathleen Stewart Howe
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 148
Release: 1997
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9780899510958

Exhibition itinerary : Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Jan. 29-May 31, 1998; University of New Mexico Art Museum, Oct. 13-Dec. 13, 1999; St. Louis Art Museum, Feb. 23-May 23, 1999.

Urban Exploration Photography

Urban Exploration Photography
Author: Todd Sipes
Publisher: Pearson Education
Total Pages: 313
Release: 2014
Genre: Photography
ISBN: 0134007921

Urban exploration photography--sometimes called "urbex"--is a unique photographic genre that requires specific skills in order to produce compelling photographs. In Urban Exploration Photography: A Guide to Creating and Editing Images of Abandoned Places, photographer Todd Sipes walks students through everything they need to know about composing, shooting, and processing photos of abandoned, man-made structures. Sipes begins with a focused discussion on preparation for this unique genre of photography, including what to bring, both photography-related and other (such as clothes and accessories). Then he dives into the chapters on shooting, where he covers the role that composition plays in urban exploration photography; the three major shooting styles or uban exploration photography; general guidelines for camera settings and gear; why you should bracket your shots; and how to approach shooting in the dark (including light painting, using flashes and gels, and using an intervalometer). He also covers what kind of subject matter to shoot, including organic and synthetic elements present in the urban exploration environment (such as overgrowth, graffiti, paint, and machinery), as well as qualities of light to look for when shooting abandoned structures. In the second part of the book, Sipes tackles post-processing, including discussions of the various "styles" in urban exploration photography, as well as the actual post-processing techniques that take place in Lightroom and Photoshop, as well as third-party plug-ins. He also dedicates a section to "Things to Avoid" in post-processing, such as "HDR fever," "over-saturation," "halos," and "chromatic aberrations."

Picturing Empire

Picturing Empire
Author: James R. Ryan
Publisher: Reaktion Books
Total Pages: 274
Release: 2013-06-01
Genre: Science
ISBN: 1780231636

Coinciding with the extraordinary expansion of Britain's overseas empire under Queen Victoria, the invention of photography allowed millions to see what they thought were realistic and unbiased pictures of distant peoples and places. This supposed accuracy also helped to legitimate Victorian geography's illuminations of the "darkest" recesses of the globe with the "light" of scientific mapping techniques. But as James R. Ryan argues in Picturing Empire, Victorian photographs reveal as much about the imaginative landscapes of imperial culture as they do about the "real" subjects captured within their frames. Ryan considers the role of photography in the exploration and domestication of foreign landscapes, in imperial warfare, in the survey and classification of "racial types," in "hunting with the camera," and in teaching imperial geography to British schoolchildren. Ryan's careful exposure of the reciprocal relation between photographic image and imperial imagination will interest all those concerned with the cultural history of the British Empire.

Capitalism and the Camera

Capitalism and the Camera
Author: Kevin Coleman
Publisher: Verso Books
Total Pages: 337
Release: 2021-05-11
Genre: Photography
ISBN: 183976080X

A provocative exploration of photography's relationship to capitalism, from leading theorists of visual culture. Photography was invented between the publication of Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations and Karl Marx and Frederick Engels's The Communist Manifesto. Taking the intertwined development of capitalism and the camera as their starting point, the essays in Capitalism and the Camera investigate the relationship between capitalist accumulation and the photographic image, and ask whether photography might allow us to refuse capitalism's violence--and if so, how? Drawn together in productive disagreement, the essays in this collection explore the relationship of photography to resource extraction and capital accumulation, from 1492 to the postcolonial; the camera's potential to make visible critical understandings of capitalist production and society, especially economies of class and desire; and propose ways that the camera and the image can be used to build cultural and political counterpublics from which a democratic struggle against capitalism might emerge. With essays by Ariella Aïsha Azoulay, Siobhan Angus, Kajri Jain, Walter Benn Michaels, T. J. Clark, John Paul Ricco, Blake Stimson, Chris Stolarski, Tong Lam, and Jacob Emery.

On Photographs

On Photographs
Author: David Campany
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2020
Genre: Photography
ISBN: 0262359464

An intimate meditation on photography for the ages, curated around 120 epochal photographs. In On Photographs, curator and writer David Campany presents an exploration of photography in 120 photographs. Proceeding not by chronology or genre or photographer, Campany's eclectic selection unfolds according to its own logic. We see work by Henri Cartier-Bresson, William Eggleston, Helen Levitt, Garry Winogrand, Yves Louise Lawler, Andreas Gursky, and Rineke Dijkstra. There is fashion photography by William Klein, one of Vivian Maier's contact sheets, and a carefully staged scene by Gregory Crewdson, as well as images culled from magazines and advertisements. Each of the 120 photographs is accompanied by Campany's lucid and incisive commentary.

The Life of a Photograph

The Life of a Photograph
Author: Sam Abell
Publisher: National Geographic Books
Total Pages: 212
Release: 2008
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1426203292

The renowned National Geographic photographer and educator presents a host of his acclaimed photographs, organized by theme, accompanied by personal anecdotes, explanations, and behind-the-scenes stories of each picture.

Turning Back

Turning Back
Author: Robert Adams
Publisher:
Total Pages: 240
Release: 2005
Genre: Nature
ISBN:

Photographs by Robert Adams.

Urban Exploration Photography

Urban Exploration Photography
Author: Todd Sipes
Publisher: Peachpit Press
Total Pages: 109
Release: 2013-12-17
Genre: Photography
ISBN: 013381694X

In Urban Exploration Photography: A Guide to Shooting Abandoned Places, photographer Todd Sipes offers a great introduction to "UrbEx" shooting, with its focus on photographing abandoned man-made structures. Sipes begins with a focused discussion on preparation for this unique genre of photography, including what to bring, both photography-related and other (such as clothes and accessories). Then he dives into the "How to Shoot" chapter, which discusses how composition plays a role in UrbEx photos; the three major shooting styles in UrbEx photography; general guidelines for camera settings and gear; why you should bracket your shots; and how to approach shooting in the dark (including light painting, using flashes and gels, and using an intervalometer). Following that is the "What to Shoot" chapter, where Sipes discusses organic and synthetic elements present in the UrbEx environment (such as overgrowth, graffiti, paint, and machinery), as well as qualities of light to look for when shooting abandoned structures.