Politics Unseen
Group f.64 Photography and the Problem of Purity
1st Edition
Published on 7. January 2025
280 pages
978-0-520-39976-1 (ISBN)
Description
In Politics Unseen, Ellen Macfarlane radically reframes the "pure photographs" of California art photography society Group f.64, known for depicting Western landscapes, fruits and vegetables, flowers, and faces. By foregrounding f.64 members' and their prints' alliances across commercial, political, and artistic domains, the book shatters entrenched understandings of the group as disinterested in contemporary events and unseats conceptions of its prints as icons of modernist purity. Instead, Politics Unseen argues the politics of f.64's photographs become visible when interwar ideas about "purity" in the areas of eugenics, racial essence, nutrition, colonialism, and horticulture are interrogated. Ultimately, Politics Unseen alters perceptions not only of f.64, but also of what constituted a political image in 1930s America.
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Other editions
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Book
01/2025
1st Edition
University of California Press
€52.08
Shipment within 10-20 days
Person
Ellen Macfarlane is Assistant Professor of Art History in the School of Art and Art History at the University of Denver.
Content
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Group f.64 and the Limits of Political Photography
2. "The Pure Negroid Types I Prefer": Consuelo Kanaga's Portraits of Black Americans
3. The Politics of Edward Weston's "Pure Food" Photography: Fruits and Vegetables in the Depression
4. Imogen Cunningham's Botanical Photographs: American Horticulture and the Colonial Purification of Plants
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
List of Illustrations
Index
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Group f.64 and the Limits of Political Photography
2. "The Pure Negroid Types I Prefer": Consuelo Kanaga's Portraits of Black Americans
3. The Politics of Edward Weston's "Pure Food" Photography: Fruits and Vegetables in the Depression
4. Imogen Cunningham's Botanical Photographs: American Horticulture and the Colonial Purification of Plants
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
List of Illustrations
Index
