The Edge of Vision: The Rise of Abstraction in Photography - Hardcover

Lyle Rexer

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1597111007 ISBN 13: 9781597111003

Publisher: Aperture, 2009

Synopsis

From the beginning, abstraction has been intrinsic to photography, and its persistent popularity reveals much about the medium. The Edge of Vision: The Rise of Abstraction in Photography is the first book in English to document this phenomenon and to put it into historical context, while also examining the diverse approaches thriving within contemporary photography. Author Lyle Rexer examines abstraction at pivotal moments, starting with the inception of photography, when many of its pioneers believed the camera might reveal other aspects of reality. The Edge of Vision traces subsequent explorations― from the Photo Secessionists who emphasized process and emotional expression over observed reality, to Modernist and Surrealist experiments. In the decades to follow, in particular from the 1940s through the 1980s, a multitude of photographers― Edward Weston, Aaron Siskind, and Barbara Kasten, among them―took up abstraction from a variety of positions. Finally, Rexer explores the influence the history of abstraction exerts on contemporary thinking about the medium. Many contemporary artists―most prominently Silvio Wolf, Marco Breuer, and Ellen Carey―reject photography’s documentary dimension in favor of other possibilities, somewhere between painting and sculpture, that include the manipulation of process and printing. In addition to Rexer’s engagingly written and richly illustrated history, this volume includes a selection of primary texts from key practitioners and critics, such as Edward Steichen, László Moholy-Nagy, and James Welling.

About this title

Review:

The only English-language book to chronicle the history of abstraction in photography. "The New Yorker"

Though approaches to photographic abstraction are varied, the end results all deny the viewer a discernible reference to reality, defying the most conventional norm in photography. "The New Yorker" "

The only English-language book to chronicle the history of abstraction in photography. The New Yorker
Though approaches to photographic abstraction are varied, the end results all deny the viewer a discernible reference to reality, defying the most conventional norm in photography. The New Yorker"

About the Author:

Lyle Rexer is a New York based independent writer and critic. His previous books include Photography s Antiquarian Avant-Garde (2002) and How to Look at Outsider Art (2005); he contributed an interview with Chuck Close and Bob Holman to A Couple of Ways of Doing Something (Aperture, 2006), and is the author of Edge of Vision (Aperture, 2010.)

About this edition

• Publisher: Aperture
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 1597111007
• ISBN 13: 9781597111003
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 292