Photography and the art of chance

Abstract

As anyone who has wielded a camera knows, photography has a unique relationship to chance. It also represents a struggle to reconcile aesthetic aspiration with a mechanical process. Robin Kelsey reveals how daring innovators expanded the aesthetic limits of photography in order to create art for a modern world.

Contents

William Henry Fox Talbot and his picture machine -- Defining art against the mechanical, c. 1860 -- Julia Margaret Cameron transfigures the glitch -- The fog of beauty, c. 1890 -- Alfred Stieglitz moves with the city -- Stalking chance and making news, c. 1930 -- Frederick Sommer decomposes our nature -- Pressing photography into a modernist mold, c. 1970 -- John Baldessari plays the fool.