Documents of Doubt : The Photographic Conditions of Conceptual Art

A major reassessment of photography’s pivotal role in 1960s conceptual art Why do we continue to look to photographs for evidence despite our awareness of photography’s potential for duplicity? Documents of Doubt critically reassesses the truth claims surrounding photographs by looking at how conceptual artists creatively undermined them. Studying the unique relationship between photography and conceptual art practices in the United States during the social and political instability of the late 1960s, Heather Diack offers vital new perspectives on our “post-truth” world and the importance of suspending easy conclusions in contemporary art. Considering the work of four leading conceptual artists of the 1960s and ’70s, Diack looks at photographs as documents of doubt, pushing the form beyond commonly assumed limits. Through in-depth and thorough reevaluations of early work by noted artists Mel Bochner, Bruce Nauman, Douglas Huebler, and John Baldessari, Diack advances the powerful thesis that photography provided a means of moving away from the object and toward performative effects, playing a crucial role in the development of conceptual art as a medium of doubt and contingency. Discussing how unexpected and contradictory meanings can exist in the guise of ordinary pictures, Documents of Doubt offers evocative and original ideas on truth’s connection to photography in the United States during the late 1960s and how conceptual art from that period anticipated our current era of “alternative facts” in contemporary politics and culture. Cover Half Title Title Copyright Dedication Contents List of Illustrations Introduction: Burning with Contingency One: Material Witness Mel Bochner Takes Photographic Measures Two: Pressing the Point Bruce Nauman Performs with and against the Frame Three: Everyone Who Is Anyone Douglas Huebler and the Social Capacity of Photography Four: This Is Not to Be Looked At John Baldessari and Photography’s Insistent Visuality Epilogue: Credibility Gap Acknowledgments Notes Index A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z "This project explores the role of photography in conceptual art practices during the 1960's and 1970's. Focusing each chapter on the work of a single, canonical figure -- Mel Bochner, Bruce Nauman, Douglas Huebler and John Baldessari -- Diack argues that these artists expanded the possibilities of the photograph as a "document of doubt," and played with the viewer's investment of truth and factuality in the medium"-- Provided by publisher "This project explores the role of photography in conceptual art practices during the 1960's and 1970's. Focusing each chapter on the work of a single, canonical figure -- Mel Bochner, Bruce Nauman, Douglas Huebler and John Baldessari -- Diack argues that these artists expanded the possibilities of the photograph as a "document of doubt," and played with the viewer's investment of truth and factuality in the medium"-- Fourni par l'éditeur "This project explores the role of photography in conceptual art practices during the 1960's and 1970's. Focusing each chapter on the work of a single, canonical figure -- Mel Bochner, Bruce Nauman, Douglas Huebler and John Baldessari -- Diack argues that these artists expanded the possibilities of the photograph as a "document of doubt," and played with the viewer's investment of truth and factuality in the medium"-- Résumé de l'éditeur