Scissors, Paper, Stone: Expressions of Memory in Contemporary Photographic Art - Hardcover

Langford, Martha

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0773532110 ISBN 13: 9780773532113

Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2007

Synopsis

Finalist: Raymond Klibansky Book Prize Humanities and Social Sciences Federation of Canada (2008) Making a connection between photography and memory is almost automatic. Should it be? In Scissors, Paper, Stone Martha Langford explores the nature of memory and art. She challenges the conventional emphasis on the camera as a tool of perception by arguing that photographic works are products of the mind - picturing memory is, first and foremost, the expression of a mental process. Langford organizes the book around the conceit of the child's game scissors, paper, stone, using it to ground her discussion of the tensions between remembering and forgetting, the intersection of memory and imagination, and the relationship between memory and history. Scissors, Paper, Stone explores the great variety of photographic art produced by Canadian artists as expressions of memory. Their work, including images by Carl Beam, Carole Condé and Karl Beveridge, Donigan Cumming, Stan Denniston, Robert Houle, Robert Minden, Michael Snow, Diana Thorneycroft, Jeff Wall, and Jin-me Yoon, is presented as part of a rich interdisciplinary study of contemporary photography and how it has shaped modern memory.

About this title

About the Author

Martha Langford is research chair and director of the Gail and Stephen A. Jarislowsky Institute for Studies in Canadian Art at Concordia University and co-editor of Photogenic Montreal: Activisms and Archives in a Post-Industrial City.

Edition details

• Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press
• Publication date: 2007
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0773532110
• ISBN 13: 9780773532113
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 368