Cotton, Charlotte : The Photograph as Contemporary Art

This book, now updated and expanded, is a profusely illustrated survey of the use of photography in contemporary art since the mid-1980s. It features the work of more than 170 of internationally renowned and up-and-coming artist-photographers, including Andreas Gursky, Nan Goldin, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Richard Billingham, Jurgen Teller, Thomas Demand, Christopher Williams, Sherrie Levine, Jeff Wall, Wolfgang Tillmans, Zoe Leonard, and many more. Themed chapters consider subjects such as narrative and storytelling in art photography, photographing the everyday and the insignificant, the use of photography in conceptual art, and the cool, detached, and objective aesthetic prevalent in current art photography. A new eighth chapter examines why many artists, in the age of digital photography, make work that focuses on the physical and material properties of photography, respond to the changing means of distributing photographic images, and push the boundaries of technology to reach larger and more diverse audiences.