Photography: A Middle-brow Art - Hardcover

Bourdieu, Pierre; Boltanski, Luc; Castel, Robert; Chamboredon, Jean-Claude; Schnapper, Dominique

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0804717605 ISBN 13: 9780804717601

Publisher: Stanford University Press, 1990

Synopsis

The everyday practice of photography by millions of amateur photographers may seem to be a spontaneous and highly personal activity. but France's leading sociologist and cultural theorist Pierre Bourdieu and his research associates show that few cultural activities are more structural and systematic than photography. This perceptive and wide-ranging analysis of the practice of photography reveals the logic implicit in this cultural field. For some social groups, photography is primarily a means of preserving the present and reproducing moments of collective celebration, whereas for other groups it is the occasion of an aesthetic judgment in which photos are endowed with the dignity of works of art. Bourdieu and his associates examine the socially differentiated forms of photographic practice by drawing on the results of surveys and interviews and by analyzing the attitudes and characteristics of both amateur and professional photographers.

About this title

Review:

'An outstanding work of scholarship. Quite simply, it is by far the best study I have seen of a particular form of aesthetic or avocational practice, a model of multi-method investigation. Moreover, it is one of those rare studies that succeed in using a narrow and apparently peripheral topic as a prism through which to illuminate the broad rules and structures of society as a whole.' Paul Di Maggio, Yale University

From the Back Cover:

The everyday practice of photography by millions of amateur photographers – the family snapshots, the holiday prints, the wedding portraits – may seem to be a spontaneous and highly personal activity. But Bourdieu and his associates show that few cultural activities are more structured and systematic than the social uses of this ordinary art.

This perceptive and wide–ranging analysis of the practice of photography brings out the logic implicit in this cultural field. The norms which define the occasions and the objects of photography serve to display the socially differentiated functions of, and attitudes towards, the photographic image and act. For some social groups, photography is primarily a means of preserving the present and reproducing the euphoric moments of collective celebration, whereas for other groups it is the occasion of an aesthetic judgement, in which photos are endowed with the dignity of works of art.

About this edition

• Publisher: Stanford University Press
• Publication date: 1990
• ISBN 10: 0804717605
• ISBN 13: 9780804717601
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 230