Making It Up: Photographic Fictions (Photography Library; Victoria and Albert Museum)

One of two launch volumes in an important and highly collectible new photography series by the V&A, here is an introduction to the history of staged photography in over 130 key images from the V&A’s outstanding collection Presenting work from the earliest through to the most contemporary of photographers, Making It Up: Photographic Fictions challenges the idea that ‘the camera never lies’. With over 130 photographs supported by extended commentaries and an introduction, the book illustrates that, though we often recognize the staged, constructed or the tableau as a feature of contemporary art photography, this way of working is almost as old as the practice itself. Remarkable in themselves, these photographic fictions, whether created by such early practitioners as Lewis Carroll or Roger Fenton, internationally renowned artists such as Cindy Sherman and Jeff Wall, or contemporary figures such as Hannah Starkey and Bridget Smith, find new and intriguing relevance in our so-called ‘post-truth’ age.

'[Marta Weiss's] history of freeze-frame tricks of the eye begins with gelatin-plate fantasies and ends with the emergence of digital techniques that allowed any kind of make-believe'
Observer

Marta Weiss is Curator of Photographs at the Victoria and Albert Museum.