American photographers documented and defined the twentieth century in a remarkable array of images, the style and content of which evolved dramatically over the course of the century. In Disappearing Witness, photographer and art historian Gretchen Garner chronicles this transformation, from the introduction of the 35-millimeter camera in the 1920s to the digital photography of today. Accompanied by over 125 key works in the history of photographyfine-art, documentary, and editorialher thoughtful and enlightening discussion traces American photography's aesthetic, commercial, and technological changes, as the medium's primary role of spontaneous witness gradually gave way to contrived arrangement and artistic invention. Garner discusses direct witness as the dominant paradigm for American photographers from the 1920s to the 1960s. During these decades, photographers saw their medium primarily as a vehicle for truthful description and sometimes as a weapon against social injustice. In the 1960s, however, photographic practice and its cultural significance shifted to reflect more personal, idiosyncratic, and staged visions of realitya trend, Garner notes, that has intensified with digital photography. The major portion of the book is devoted to post-1960s work, exploring how the changes have affected portraiture, documentary, landscape, still life, fashion, and the new genre of self-imagery. In documenting this transformation in American photography, Disappearing Witness forcefully rethinks the history of photography itself.31 color photos and 107 halftones
Contents: List of Illustrations Preface and Acknowledgments Introduction PART I Photography of Witness ONE Being There: Spontaneous Witness TWO Speed and the Machine THREE Fine-Art Photography, Redefined FOUR Documentary FIVE The Magazines SIX Spirit in PhotographyPART II Disappearing Witness SEVEN New Paradigms: Uelsmann, Michals, and Samaras EIGHT Documentary-Style and Street Photography NINE Photography about Photography: The Academy and the Art World TEN New Landscapes, New Portraits: The Seventies and Eighties ELEVEN The Subject Self TWELVE Arrangement, Invention, and Appropriation THIRTEEN Digitized PhotographyConclusionNotes Works Cited Index
""This well-written, readable book would be best used as a course resource in 20th-century photography.""
