Description
Book SynopsisAs its title suggests, Negative/Positive begins with the negative, a foundational element of analog photography that is nonetheless usually ignored, and uses this to tell a representative, rather than comprehensive, history of the medium.
The fact that a photograph is split between negative and positive manifestations means that its identity is always simultaneously divided and multiplied. The interaction of these two components was often spread out over time and space and could involve more than one person, giving photography the capacity to produce multiple copies of a given image and for that image to have many different looks, sizes and makers. This book traces these complications for canonical images by such figures as William Henry Fox Talbot, Kusakabe Kimbei, Dorothea Lange, Man Ray, Seydou KeÃta, Richard Avedon, and Andreas Gursky. But it also considers a number of related issues crucial to any understanding of photography, from the business practices of profes
Table of Contents
1. Negatives and Positives ; 2. Inventing Negatives ; 3. Photographic Drawings ; 4. More of the Same ; 5. Control Methods ; 6. Created Worlds ; 7. Hiding in Plain Sight ; 8. The Cult of the Negative ; 9. Electricity Made Visible ; 10. Authorship and Ownership ; 11. Refashioning a Past ; 12. Return of the Repressed ; 13. Proper Names ; 14. Does Size Matter? ; 15. Ordering Things ; 16. Poses and Settings ; 17. Hidden Mothers ; 18. Collecting Things ; 19. Still Life ; 20. Repetition and Difference ; 21. Negative/Positive.
