Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Now in its sixth edition, this seminal textbook examines key debates in photographic theory and places them in their social and political contexts. Written especially for students in further and higher education and for introductory college courses, it provides a coherent introduction to the nature of photographic seeing.

Individual chapters cover:

* Key debates in photographic theory and history

* Documentary photography and photojournalism

* Personal and popular photography

* Photography and the human body

* Photography and commodity culture

* Photography as art.

This revised and updated edition includes new case studies on topics such as: Black Lives Matter and the racialised body; the #MeToo movement; materialism and embodiment; nation branding; and an extended critical discussion of landscape as genre.

Illustrated with over 100 colour and black and white photographs, it features work from Bill Brandt, Susan Derges, Rineke Dijkstra, Fran Herbello, Hannah Höch, Mari Katayama, Sant Khalsa, Karen Knorr, Dorothea Lange, Susan Meiselas, Lee Miller, Ingrid Pollard, Jacob Riis, Alexander Rodchenko, Andres Serrano, Cindy Sherman and Jeff Wall.

A fully updated resource information, including guides to public archives and useful websites, full glossary of terms and a comprehensive bibliography, plus additional resources at routledgetextbooks.com/textbooks/9780367222758/ make this an ideal introduction to the field.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Contributors (p. xi)
• Editor's preface (p. xiii)
• Acknowledgements (p. xv)
• Illustration acknowledgements (p. xvi)
• Introduction (p. 1)
• 1 Thinking about photography: Debates, historically and now (p. 11)
• Introduction (p. 13)
• Aesthetics and technologies (p. 15)
• The impact of new technologies (p. 15)
• Art and technology (p. 16)
• The photograph as document (p. 20)
• Photography, modernity and the postmodern (p. 23)
• Aesthetic debates now (p. 28)
• Contemporary debates (p. 31)
• What is theory? (p. 31)
• Photography theory (p. 33)
• Critical reflections on realism (p. 35)
• Reading images (p. 40)
• Photography reconsidered (p. 43)
• Theory, criticism, practice (p. 45)
• Case study: Image analysis: The example of Migrant Mother (p. 49)
• Histories of photography (p. 60)
• Which founding father? (p. 61)
• The photograph as image (p. 62)
• History in focus (p. 65)
• Photography and social history (p. 68)
• Social history and photography (p. 68)
• The photograph as testament (p. 69)
• Categorical photography (p. 72)
• Institutions and contexts (p. 76)
• Museums and archives (p. 77)
• 2 Surveyors and surveyed: Photography out and about (p. 83)
• Introduction (p. 85)
• Documentary and photojournalism: issues and definitions (p. 87)
• Documentary photography (p. 87)
• Photojournalism (p. 88)
• Photography and war (p. 89)
• War and spectacle (p. 96)
• Documentary and authenticity (p. 98)
• Defining the real in the age of social media (p. 101)
• Surveys and social facts (p. 106)
• Victorian surveys and investigations (p. 106)
• Photographing workers (p. 109)
• The construction of documentary (p. 117)
• Picturing ourselves (p. 118)
• The Farm Security Administration (FSA) (p. 126)
• Discussion: Drum (p. 129)
• Documentary: New cultures, new spaces (p. 132)
• Photography on the streets (p. 132)
• Theory and the critique of documentary (p. 138)
• Cultural politics and everyday life (p. 140)
• The real world in colour (p. 142)
• Documentary and photojournalism in the global age (p. 145)
• 3 'Sweet it is to scan...': Personal photographs and popular photography (p. 149)
• Introduction (p. 151)
• Private lives and personal pictures; Users and readers (p. 153)
• In and beyond the charmed circle of the home (p. 156)
• The public and the private in personal photography (p. 156)
• Beyond the domestic (p. 160)
• Portraits and albums (p. 164)
• Informality and intimacy (p. 170)
• The working classes picture themselves (p. 172)
• The Kodak path: Kodak and the mass market (p. 177)
• The supersnap in Kodaland (p. 183)
• Paths unholy and deeds without a name? (p. 187)
• Re-viewing the archive (p. 187)
• Autobiography: Exploring childhood (p. 193)
• Post-family and post-photography? The digital world and the end of privacy (p. 197)
• Change (p. 201)
• Continuity (p. 203)
• Moment of taking (p. 204)
• Moments of viewing and sharing (p. 206)
• Moments of organising and reviewing: the role of the archive (p. 207)
• And in the galleries... (p. 208)
• 4 The subject as object: Photography and the human body (p. 211)
• Introduction (p. 213)
• The photographic body in crisis (p. 213)
• Embodying social difference (p. 218)
• Photography and identification (p. 218)
• New dimension: Mattering black lives (p. 223)
• Objects of desire and disgust (p. 227)
• Objectlfication, fetishism, voyeurism (p. 227)
• The celebrity body (p. 229)
• Pornography and sexual imagery (p. 232)
• Class and representations of the body (p. 235)
• New dimension: #Me 2.0 (p. 237)
• Technological bodies (p. 240)
• The camera as mechanical eye (p. 240)
• Interventions and scientific images (p. 243)
• The body as machine (p. 245)
• Digital imaging and the malleable body (p. 249)
• Case study: Materialism and embodiment (p. 251)
• New dimension: Seeing textures (p. 255)
• The body in transition (p. 258)
• Photography, birth and death (p. 258)
• Summary (p. 263)
• 5 Spectacles and illusions: Photography and commodity culture (p. 265)
• Introduction: The society of the spectacle (p. 267)
• Photographic portraiture and commodity culture (p. 269)
• Photojournalism, glamour and the paparazzi (p. 271)
• Stock photography, image banks and corporate media (p. 275)
• Commodity spectacles in advertising photography (p. 280)
• The grammar of the ad (p. 287)
• Case study: The commodification of human experience - Coca Cola's Open Happiness Campaign (p. 287)
• The transfer and contestation of meaning (p. 290)
• Hegemony in photographic representation (p. 292)
• Photomontage: Concealing social relations (p. 293)
• The fetishisation of labour relations (p. 296)
• The gaze and gendered representations (p. 297)
• Fashion and tourism (p. 301)
• Case study: Tourism, fashion and 'the Other' (p. 306)
• Case study: Self-Orientalisation and the construction of nationhood in the Incredible India campaign (p. 314)
• The context of the image (p. 318)
• Image worlds (p. 319)
• Case study: Benetton, Toscani and the limits of advertising (p. 321)
• 6 On and beyond the white walls: Photography as art (p. 327)
• Introduction (p. 329)
• Photography as art (p. 330)
• Early debates and practices (p. 333)
• The complex relations between photography and art (p. 333)
• Photography extending art (p. 336)
• Photography claiming a place in the gallery (p. 338)
• The modern era (p. 342)
• Modernism and Modern Art (p. 342)
• Modern photography (p. 345)
• Photo-eye: New ways of seeing (p. 347)
• Case study: Art, design, politics: Soviet Constructivism (p. 348)
• Emphasis on form (p. 350)
• American formalism (p. 352)
• Case study: Art movements and intellectual currencies: Surrealism (p. 354)
• Surrealist photography (p. 355)
• Late twentieth-century perspectives (p. 357)
• Conceptual art and the photographic (p. 358)
• Photography and the postmodern (p. 360)
• Women's photography (p. 365)
• Questions of identity (p. 367)
• Identity and the multi-cultural (p. 368)
• Case study: Landscape as genre (p. 370)
• Photography within the institution (p. 388)
• Art photography now (p. 390)
• Curators, collectors and festivals (p. 393)
• Blurring the boundaries (p. 395)
• Afterword (p. 397)
• Glossary (p. 401)
• From analogue to digital (p. 409)
• Photography archives (p. 413)
• Bibliography (p. 419)
• Index (p. 447)