Looking at Photographs

New in the Art Essentials series, an introductory guide to the art of looking at and engaging with photography.

Everything counts in a good photograph, even down to the smallest details. This introductory guide is structured to help you develop new and more in-depth ways of looking at images, whether as a viewer or practitioner – or just out snapping with your smartphone.

Looking at Photographs outlines key approaches to help us understand why a photograph captures our attention and moves us. Across seven chapters, visual culture expert Laurent Jullier discusses themes and concepts that are essential to understanding the medium, including: photography as a reflection of reality; manipulation and defamiliarization; focus, perspective and space; time and the moment; identity, portraits and selfies; the power of images.

With examples drawn from across the world and throughout the history of photography, from Louis Daguerre to Julia Margaret Cameron, László Moholy-Nagy, Dorothea Lange, Andreas Gursky, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Dayanita Singh, Aïda Muluneh and many others, as well as a helpful glossary of terms, this guide is not just about learning ‘how to read’ photographs, it is about knowing how to ask the right questions when you look at images.

Review

A useful set of guidebooks to the fields that inform contemporary art [that] are fully illustrated, well produced, informative, and concise.-- "Choice"

About the Author

Laurent Jullier is a Professor at the Institut Européen de Cinéma et d’Audiovisuel, University of Lorraine; Director of Research at the Institut de Recherches sur le Cinéma et l’Audiovisuel, Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris; and a member of the Advanced Research Team on the History and Epistemology of Film and Moving Image Study at Concordia University, Montreal. Editor of the journal Mise Au Point, he teaches visual culture studies and has written several books and articles.