Provides a history of photography through essays on its major themes and genres

Containing 30 essays that embody the history of photography, this collection includes contributions from Niepce, Daguerre, Fox, Talbot, Poe, Emerson, Hine, Stieglitz, and Weston, among others.

What is photography? Is it a source of knowledge or an art? Many have said the former because it records the world automatically, others the latter because it expresses human subjectivity. Can photography be both or must we choose? In On Photography: A Philosophical Inquiry, Diarmuid Costello examines these fascinating

"This anthology investigates books that juxtapose photographs and written language (photo-texts), considering a variety of examples from America, Britain, Canada, and France. Ranging from Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Marble Faun to Michael Ondaatje's postmodern novel Coming Through Slaughter and Edward Said's postdocumentary After the Last Sky, the contributors' analyses address photo-textuality's

An anthology of 37 recent essays exploring gender, sexuality, body politics, and race, highlighting feminist and lesbian/gay perspectives. They are arranged in sections titled Embodiments of History: Local Meanings, Global Economies; Making Marks and Drawing Boundaries: Corporate Practices; and Appropriations, Contestations, and Adaptations: Toward a History of the Present. No