Heather Diack

A major reassessment of photography’s pivotal role in 1960s conceptual art Why do we continue to look to photographs for evidence despite our awareness of photography’s potential for duplicity? Documents of Doubt critically reassesses the truth claims surrounding photographs by looking at how conceptual artists creatively undermined them. Studying the unique relationship between photography and conceptual art practices in the United States during the social and political instability of the late 1960s, Heather Diack offers vital new perspectives on our “post-truth” world and the importance of suspending easy conclusions in contemporary art. Considering the work of four leading conceptual artists of the 1960s and ’70s, Diack looks at photographs as documents of doubt, pushing the form beyond commonly assumed limits. Through in-depth and thorough reevaluations of early work by noted artists Mel Bochner, Bruce Nauman, Douglas Huebler, and John Baldessari, Diack advances the powerful thesis that photography provided a means of moving away from the object and toward performative effects, playing a crucial role in the development of conceptual art as a medium of doubt and contingency. Discussing how unexpected and contradictory meanings can exist in the guise of ordinary pictures, Documents of Doubt offers evocative and original ideas on truth’s connection to photography in the United States during the late 1960s and how conceptual art from that period anticipated our current era of “alternative facts” in contemporary politics and culture.

The Photographic Conditions of Conceptual Art

Documents of Doubt

Erina Duganne

Terri Weissman

This innovative text recounts the history of photography through a series of thematically structured chapters. Designed and written for students studying photography and its history, each chapter approaches its subject by introducing a range of international, contemporary photographers and then contextualizing their work in historical terms. The book offers students an accessible route to gain an understanding of the key genres, theories and debates that are fundamental to the study of this rich and complex medium. Individual chapters cover major topics, including: · Description and Abstraction · Truth and Fiction · The Body · Landscape · War · Politics of Representation · Form · Appropriation · Museums · The Archive · The Cinematic · Fashion Photography Boxed focus studies throughout the text offer short interviews, curatorial statements and reflections by photographers, critics and leading scholars that link photography's history with its practice. Short chapter summaries, research questions and further reading lists help to reinforce learning and promote discussion. Whether coming to the subject from an applied photography or art history background, students will benefit from this book's engaging, example-led approach to the subject, gaining a sophisticated understanding of international photography in historical terms.

Heather Diack

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