Why Photography Matters to the Theory of History

Bibliographic Data

ID4495787
AuthorsMichael S Roth (0000-0002-2304-3199, Wesleyan University, corresponding author)
Year2010
Volume49
Issue1
Pages90-103
Publication date2010-02-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueHistory and Theory (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0018-2656 • E-ISSN: 1468-2303
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/j.1468-2303.2010.00530.x
OpenAlexW2066917427
LanguageEN
Citations received2

Georges Didi-Huberman's study is concerned with epistemological and ethical questions that arise from visual representations of the Shoah, while Michael Fried's is concerned with the ontological possibilities explored by contemporary art photography. The books have two things in common: an argument against postmodern skepticism, and an insistence that photography has become a field in which questions of history, truth, and authenticity are being explored with particular acuity. Rather than reject even the possibility that photographs have something to tell us about the Shoah, Didi-Huberman shows that they can offer important insights into the difficulties and the possibilities of apprehending some aspects of the past.Fried shows that contemporary photographic work has taken on the ambitions of high modernism by accepting the challenge of "to-be-seenness." Photography as a "historical practice" does not escape from the difficulties of evidence and of the "constructed" nature of historical understanding; photography functions neither as a pure trace of the past, nor as a mere invitation to spectacle

Aesthetics · Argument (complex analysis) · Art · Epistemology · Photography · Postmodernism · Skepticism · Sociology · Subject (documents) · TRACE (psycholinguistics) · Visual arts · Memory, Trauma, and Commemoration · Philosophy · Photography and Visual Culture · Visual Culture and Art Theory

Tools

Open DOISci-Hub