The Engine of Visualization: Thinking through Photography - Hardcover

Maynard, Patrick

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0801433657 ISBN 13: 9780801433658

Publisher: Cornell University Press, 1997

Synopsis

"An extremely fascinating study, packed with insights and illumination and astute observation. It is first-rate philosophy-clearheaded, imaginative, sophisticated, and resourceful. And in its historical and technological dimensions, it connects with the 'real world' in ways that are rare in philosophical studies."-Kendall Walton, University of Michigan"For Patrick Maynard photography is in the first instance a technology for marking surfaces, and from this insight flows the most original sustained analysis and argument yet produced in the history of thinking about the camera and its work. At once analytical and historical, scientific and aesthetic, as lucid and witty as it is learned, The Engine of Visualization spells out the simplest general principles necessary for a clear understanding of what photography-also technology, image, and art-is and does. This is a signal achievement, and a simply lovely book."-Alan Trachtenberg, Yale UniversityIn the first philosophical book wholly about photography, Patrick Maynard dispels some basic, persistent confusions by treating photography as a technology-a way to enhance and filter human power. Once photography is understood as a kind of technology, Maynard argues, insights about technology may be applied to provide the general perspective on photography that has been missing.

About this title

Review:

"Philosopher Patrick Maynard makes a provocative case for revising commonly held definitions of photography."

--Technology and Culture

"The Engine of Visualization: Thinking Through Photography by Patrick Maynard makes an original contribution to the ongoing conversation about photography by calling attention to the unexpected forms into which the 'technology' of photography has been evolving."

--The Art Book

Synopsis:

In this philosophical text on photography, Patrick Maynard attempts to dispel some of the basic persistent confusions of thought by treating photography as a technology - a way to enhance and filter human power. Once photography is understood as a kind of technology, Maynard suggests, insights about technology may be applied to provide the general perspective on photography which has been missing. Photography extends our human ability to produce images, which are understood as surface markings - here induced by light. Through an approach to photography which he intends as both analytic and consistently sensitive to photo-history, Maynard places photography among modern imaging technologies, such as those familiar in medicine, and addresses some provocative questions. Technologies amplify but they also suppress, he says. What does photography suppress? How should we think about depictive fidelity? What problems do the new digital technologies bring in their wake? What accounts for the persistent ambivalence regarding photographic art?

Although Maynard's particular focus is photography, much of his discussion seeks to illuminate issues concerning other technologies and other kinds of images.

About this edition

• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0801433657
• ISBN 13: 9780801433658
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 352