Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Today's photography is part of our own cultural moment, but it also arises from artistic traditions of the past. Seduced by Art looks at the effects of art and its history on the creation of photographs, tracing continuities in aims, visual style, and technical experimentation.

This sumptuous book shows how photographers such as Julia Margaret Cameron sought to elevate the status of their work by referencing Old Masters. Similarly, contemporary practitioners look to their photographic predecessors, as well as art history, for inspiration. Among the many photographers featured are Ori Gersht, Luc Delahaye, Thomas Struth, Tom Hunter, and Helen Chadwick, and paintings from Caravaggio, Zurbarán, Delacroix, Ingres, Constable, and others.

Each chapter takes a genre--portraiture, the nude, still life, and landscape--and discusses the challenges that each poses for photographers. Interviews with Tina Barney, Rineke Dijkstra, Richard Billingham, Richard Learoyd, Sarah Jones, and Maisie Maud Broadhead focus in-depth on contemporary working practices.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

This catalogue for the first exhibition of photographs at London's National Gallery, curated by Kingsley (Wilson Centre for Photography), brings together works by historical and contemporary photographers with Old Master paintings. An introduction establishes the mutual interaction between photography and painting in the 19th century; following that, the book is organized into sections, including "Portraits," "Photographing the Body," "Still Life," and "Seascapes and Landscapes." An interview with a contemporary photographer follows each. All reproductions are in color; many of the paintings are from the National Gallery and photographs from the Wilson Centre. All the usual names from the 19th century are here: Cameron, Hill and Adamson, Talbot, and Rejlander. Contemporary photographers include Tina Barney, Helen Chadwick, Rineke Dijkstra, Richard Learoyd, and Jeff Wall. Each comparison is discussed in detail. This is not a pioneering example of new scholarship; many relevant titles have been published over the years. Though this exercise is interesting, especially in terms of the contemporary photographers, one wonders whether the National Gallery would have been better served with a survey of outstanding photographs, as at the Royal Academy in 1989 (The Art of Photography, 1839-1989, edited by Mike Weaver, CH, Oct'89, 27-0756). Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-level undergraduates through researchers/faculty; general readers. P. C. Bunnell emeritus, Princeton University