
The Edge of Vision
The Rise of Abstraction in Photography
Lyle Rexer(Author)
Aperture (Publisher)
Will be published approx. on 2. September 2013
Book
Paperback/Softback
292 pages
978-1-59711-242-0 (ISBN)
Description
From the beginning, abstraction has been intrinsic to photography, and its persistent popularity reveals much about the medium. The Edge of Vision: The Rise of Abstraction in Photography is the first book in English to document this phenomenon and to put it into historical context, while also examining the diverse approaches thriving within contemporary photography. Aperture is pleased to release this book in an affordable paperback edition. Author Lyle Rexer examines abstraction at pivotal moments, starting with the inception of photography, when many of the pioneers believed the camera might reveal other aspects of reality. The Edge of Vision traces subsequent explorations-from the Photo-Secessionists, who emphasized process and emotional expression over observed reality, to Modernist and Surrealist experiments. In the decades to follow, in particular from the 1950s through the 1980s, a multitude of photographers-Edward Weston, Aaron Siskind, Barbara Kasten, Ellen Carey, and James Welling among them-took up abstraction from a variety of positions. Finally, Rexer explores the influence the history of abstraction exerts on contemprary thinking about the medium. Many contemporary artists-most prominently Penelope Umbrico, Michael Flomen, and Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin-reject classic definitions of photography's documentary dimension in favor of other conceptually inflected possibilities, somewhere between painting and sculpture, that include the manipulation of process and printing. In addition to Rexer's engagingly written and richly illustrated history, this volume includes a selection of primary texts from and interviews with key practitioners and critics, such as Alvin Langdon Coburn, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Gottfried Jaegger, Silvio Wolf, and Walead Beshty.
Reviews / Votes
The only English-language book to chronicle the history of abstraction in photography. -The New YorkerThough approaches to photographic abstraction are varied, the end results all deny the viewer a discernible reference to reality, defying the most conventional norm in photography. -The New Yorker
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Illustrations
Illustrated in colour throughout
Dimensions
Height: 256 mm
Width: 202 mm
Thickness: 22 mm
Weight
1172 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-59711-242-0 (9781597112420)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Previous edition

Book
05/2009
Aperture
€57.08
Article exhausted; check for reprint
Person
Lyle Rexer is a New York-based independent writer and critic. His previous books include Photography's Antiquarian Avant-Garde (2002) and How to Look at Outsider Art (2005); he contributed an interview with Chuck Close and Bob Holman to A Couple of Ways of Doing Something (Aperture, 2006), and is the author of Edge of Vision (Aperture, 2010.)