Seizing the Light


Book Description

The definitive history of photography book, Seizing the Light: A Social & Aesthetic History of Photography delivers the fascinating story of how photography as an art form came into being, and its continued development, maturity, and transformation. Covering the major events, practitioners, works, and social effects of photographic practice, Robert Hirsch provides a concise and discerning chronological account of Western photography. This fundamental starting place shows the diversity of makers, inventors, issues, and applications, exploring the artistic, critical, and social aspects of the creative process. The third edition includes up-to-date information about contemporary photographers like Cindy Sherman and Yang Yongliang, and comprehensive coverage of the digital revolution, including the rise of mobile photography, the citizen as journalist, and the role of social media. Highly illustrated with full-color images and contributions from hundreds of artists around the world, Seizing the Light serves as a gateway to the history of photography. Written in an accessible style, it is perfect for students newly engaging with the practice of photography and for experienced photographers wanting to contextualize their own work.







Exploring Color Photography


Book Description

Robert Hirsch’s Exploring Color Photography is the thinking photographer’s guide to color imagemaking. Now in its sixth edition, this pioneering text clearly and concisely instructs students and intermediate photographers in the fundamental aesthetic and technical building blocks needed to create thought-provoking digital and analog color photographs. Taking both a conceptual and pragmatic approach, the book avoids getting bogged down in complex, ever-changing technological matters, allowing it to stay fresh and engaging. Known as the Bible of Color Photography, its stimulating assignments encourage students to be adventurous and to take responsibility for learning and working independently. The emphasis on design and postmodern theoretical concepts stresses the thought process behind the creation of intriguing images. It’s extensive and inspiring collection of images and accompanying captions allow makers to provide insight into how photographic methodology was utilized to visualize and communicate their objectives. The text continues to deliver inspiring leadership in the field of color photography with the latest accurate information, ideas, commentary, history, a diverse collection of contemporary images, and expanded cellphone photography coverage. A "Problem Solving and Writing" chapter offers methods and exercises that help one learn to be a visual problem solver and to discuss and write succinctly about the concepts at the foundation of one’s work. Exploringcolorphotography.com, the companion website, has been revamped and updated to feature more student and teacher resources, including a new web-based timeline: As It Happened: A Chronological History of Color Photography.




Photography


Book Description

Each of the eight chapters takes a period of up to forty years and examines the medium through the lenses of art, science, social science, travel, war, fashion, the mass media and individual practitioners.-Back Cover.




Light and Lens


Book Description

Hirsch presents an introductory book that clearly and concisely provides the instruction and building blocks necessary to create thought-provoking digitally based photographs. It is an idea book that features numerous classroom-tested assignments and exercises from leading photographic educators.




Looking at Photographs


Book Description

From its origins at the end of the 1830s, photography has evolved both aesthetically and technologically. This guide explains the technical terms used in photography, and offers an account of the dramatic rise of digital photography. It is suitable for those wishing to increase their understanding and enjoyment of the art of photography.




Photography and Cyprus


Book Description

Formerly a British colony, the island of Cyprus is now a divided country, where histories of political and cultural conflicts, as well as competing identities, are still contested. Cyprus provides the ideal case study for this innovative exploration, extensively illustrated, of how the practice of photography in relation to its political, cultural and economic contexts both contributes and responds to the formation of identity. Contributors from Cyprus, Greece, the UK and the USA, representing diverse disciplines, draw from photography theory, art history, anthropology and sociology to explore how the island and its people have been represented photographically. They reveal how the different gazes- colonial, political, gendered, and within art photography- contribute to the creation of individual and national identities and, by extension, to the creation and re-creation of imagery of Cyprus as place. While Photography and Cyprus focuses on one geographical and cultural territory, the questions this book asks and the themes and arguments it follows apply also to other places characterized by their colonial heritage. The intriguing example of Cyprus thus serves as a fitting test-ground for current debates relating to photography, place and identity.




Transformational Imagemaking: Handmade Photography Since 1960


Book Description

This groundbreaking survey of significant work and ideas focuses on imagemakers who have pushed beyond the boundaries of photography as a window on our material world. Through interviews with more than 40 key artists, this book explores a diverse group of curious experimentalists who have propelled the medium’s evolution by visualizing their subject matter as it originates from their mind’s eye. Many favor the historical techniques commonly known as alternative photographic processes, but all these makers demonstrate that the real alternative is found in their mental approach and not in their use of physical methods. Within this context, photographer and photography historian Robert Hirsch outlines the varied approaches these artists have utilized to question conventional photographic practices, to convey internal realities, and to examine what constitutes photographic reality. Hirsch explores the half-century evolution of these concepts and methodologies and their popularity among contemporary imagemakers who are merging digital and analog processes to express what was thought to be photographically inexpressible. Read an interview with the author at Photo.net: http://photo.net/learn/photographer-interviews/robert-hirsch




Colonialist Photography


Book Description

Colonialist Photography is an absorbing collection of essays and photographs exploring the relationship between photography and European and American colonialism. The book is packed with well over a hundred captivating images, ranging from the first experiments with photography as a documentary medium up to the decolonization of many regions after World War II. Reinforcing a broad range of Western assumptions and prejudices, Eleanor M. Hight and Gary D. Sampson argue that such images often assisted in the construction of a colonial culture.




Seizing the Light


Book Description

The definitive history of photography book, Seizing the Light: A Social & Aesthetic History of Photography delivers the fascinating story of how photography as an art form came into being, and its continued development, maturity, and transformation. Covering the major events, practitioners, works, and social effects of photographic practice, Robert Hirsch provides a concise and discerning chronological account of Western photography. This fundamental starting place shows the diversity of makers, inventors, issues, and applications, exploring the artistic, critical, and social aspects of the creative process. The third edition includes up-to-date information about contemporary photographers like Cindy Sherman and Yang Yongliang, and comprehensive coverage of the digital revolution, including the rise of mobile photography, the citizen as journalist, and the role of social media. Highly illustrated with full-color images and contributions from hundreds of artists around the world, Seizing the Light serves as a gateway to the history of photography. Written in an accessible style, it is perfect for students newly engaging with the practice of photography and for experienced photographers wanting to contextualize their own work.