Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

A short illustrated survey of the use of photography in contemporary art since the mid-1980s.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Introduction (p. 7)
• Chapter 1 If This Is Art (p. 21)
• Chapter 2 Once Upon a Time (p. 49)
• Chapter 3 Deadpan (p. 81)
• Chapter 4 Something and Nothing (p. 115)
• Chapter 5 Intimate Life (p. 137)
• Chapter 6 Moments in History (p. 167)
• Chapter 7 Revived and Remade (p. 191)
• Further reading (p. 219)
• List of illustrations (p. 220)
• Index (p. 224)

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

The Photograph as Contemporary Art was first published in 2004 (2nd ed. reviewed in CH, Jul'10, 47-6059). This fourth edition comprises 273 photographs so diverse in style, subject, content, technique, methodology, ideology, and so on that Cotton can identify the photographers as actual "artists" only if they have publicly claimed to be artists, or if that status can be inferred by the venues in which their photographs are displayed. But Cotton has done well in providing a coherent survey of the immense variety and diversity of contemporary photographic art practice. The work included dates from the late 1980s to almost 2020, and it is accompanied with a valuable running commentary that briefly situates the photograph or the artist within some aspect of current practice. The problem with this type of book is that for every artist named one can think of a dozen others who are not. Two groups of artists are curiously underrepresented: visual artists who have incorporated photography within their work--e.g., Robert Rauchenberg, Christian Boltanski, and Anselm Kiefer--and established photographers like Robert Frank and Sebastien Salgado, who began earlier but were still producing mature, innovative, influential work throughout the period Cotton covers. But that is a nitpick in an otherwise useful book. Summing Up: Recommended. All readers. --William S. Johnson, George Fox University