The Body and the Lens: Photography 1839 to the Present (Perspectives)

Pultz explores various issues in photography by focusing on one of its greatest subjects--the human body. He traces images of the body--male and female, child and adult, nude and clothed--from the tintypes of anonymous itinerant photographers to the great classic works of the masters of the medium to the artistic experiments of today. 125 illustrations, 32 in color. The history of photography is closely linked with the invention and reinvention of Modernism. Developed in the midnineteenth century, photography is the most purely modern of all art forms. Using a new technology, it is the child of the Industrial Revolution, and its styles, concerns, and meanings have grown and changed with those of the modern age. As the western world reaches its second millennium, critics have begun to reexamine the last 150 years from the perspective of Modernism's successes and failures, and ..