Photography

Between a 19th century partly marked by the appearance of photography and a 21st century which seems to be the new digital age, the 20th century appears to have exemplarily fulfilled a destiny of art which Benjamin announced as photographic. Put into perspective, and with hindsight, it can be historically defined, today, as the period of art during which the photographic model spread through theories and uses, shifting from an almost total absence at the start of the century to an ultra-presence from the 1980s on. This breakthrough, which goes beyond simple use and becomes part of actual practices, traces a history written in a multiple style, somewhere between-with-the history of photography, the history of art, and the history of culture. So when this involves not only envisaging this history, but also drawing consequences from it for contemporary art work, two questions come to the fore: over and above the generalization of its use, over and above its inclusion in art practices, what exactly was the role of photography in that specific history of 20th century art? And, in return, what was its effect on photography itself? In other words, this wholesale recourse to the use of photography in the 20th century has had a twofold effect on art and photography, which remains to be appraised

Aesthetics · Art · Art history · Hindsight bias · History of art · History of photography · Modern art · Performance art · Photography · Visual arts · Art, Politics, and Modernism · History · Photography and Visual Culture · Visual Culture and Art Theory · Architecture