Four Arts of Photography: An Essay in Philosophy

In Four Arts of Photography, Dominic McIver Lopes explores the history of photography through the lens of philosophy and proposes a new scholarly understanding of the art form for the 21st century. Art lovers and critics have been captivated by photography since its invention, but they have also been plagued by questions about its seriousness, meaning, and truthfulness. Here Lopes reexamines the history of art photography through four major photographic movements. He discusses several individual images in detail and alternates a top–down, theory to case approach with a bottom–up, case to theory approach. He references influential primary sources as well as the reception of important art works by art critics. Also included are two commentaries by top philosophers of photography, Diarmuid Costello and Cynthia A. Freeland, who enhance and extend the scholarly conversation that Lopes begins. Covering the full range of contemporary photographic art in a systematic way, this book advances a new theory of the nature of photography that is grounded in technology but refuses to place this most enigmatic art form in opposition to painting.

List of Illustrations xi

Notes on Author and Contributors xii

Preface xiii

Wonderment to Puzzlement 1

How to Do Things with Theory 17

To Possess Other Eyes: The First Art 36

Thinking Through Photographs: The Second Art 48

A New Theory of Photography 65

Lyricism: The Third Art 87

The Knowing Eye 105

Abstraction: The Fourth Art 114

Crosscurrents and Boundary Conditions 125

Appendix: The Skeptic s Argument 133

Comments

Doing Justice to the Art in Photography 135
Diarmuid Costello

Four Thoughts about Four Arts of Photography 147
Cynthia A. Freeland

Notes 157

Index 174

Dominic McIver Lopes is Distinguished University Scholar and Professor of Philosophy at the University of British Columbia, Canada. He is the author of Understanding Pictures (1996) and Sight and Sensibility: Evaluating Pictures (2005), as well as books on computer art and the nature of art. His first camera was a Kodak Instamatic 124, which he used to document his family s migration from Scotland to Canada.