Susan Bright Book order

From basic sustenance to savory repasts, food awakens the senses and touches both private and public life. It can be political, religious, aspirational, commercial, creative, symbolic, national, and regional. Food's complexity of form and meaning--and the fact that it's often at hand--have made it a much-photographed subject throughout the history of photography. Interest in both food photography and food as a subject has risen in recent years, and this is the first book to cover food photography's rich history--not only in fine art photography, but also in crossover genres such as commercial and scientific photography and photojournalism. Susan Bright's introduction and commentary accompanying the photographs bring insight and intelligence to this spectacular subject, and trace the progression of the genre from photography's beginnings to present day, featuring artists from all eras--Roger Fenton, Nickolas Muray, Edward Weston, Irving Penn, Stephen Shore, Laura Letinsky, Wolfgang Tillmans, Nobuyoshi Araki, and Martin Parr, to name a few. Through key pictures, Bright explores the important figures and movements of food photography to provide an essential primer.

“An essential book for anyone interested in contemporary photography.”—ArtReview Now revised and expanded, this essential survey presents the work of eighty of the most important artist-photographers in the world. The book is divided into seven sections—Portrait, Landscape, Narrative, Object, Fashion, Document, and City—that explore the diverse subjects, styles, and methods of the leading practitioners. Introductions to each section outline the genres and consider why photographers are attracted to certain themes, and how issues like memory, time, objectivity, politics, identity, and the everyday are tied to their approaches. Each photographer’s work is accompanied by Susan Bright’s commentaries and by quotations from the artist. Leading artists such as Andreas Gursky, Cindy Sherman, Sophie Calle, Nan Goldin and Martin Parr, Gregory Crewdson, Candida Ho¨fer, Gabriel Orozco, and Wolfgang Tillmans are featured alongside emerging international figures, including Viviane Sassen, LaToya Ruby Frazier, and Leigh Ladure. The introduction explores the historical relationship between art and photography from the early nineteenth century, and a new final chapter looks at the changes photography has undergone in recent years.