Photography and Doubt

Photography and Doubt provides a counter-history, by way of individually authored case studies, to a dominant strand in photographic history that emphasizes the medium's documentary or factual value. Instead, these new essays emphasize that photographic realism and fiction almost always coexist at the levels of production and reception, thus generating a more nuanced account of photography in which instability and veracity cohabit across the medium's larger history. Photography and Doubt will be an invaluable companion to undergraduate textbooks devoted to standard histories of the medium as well as providing a valuable resource for scholars.

Sabine T. Kriebel teaches at the University College Cork, Republic of Ireland, where she has taught modern art and photography since 2004. Kriebel is author of Revolutionary Beauty: The Radical Photomontages of John Heartfield (2014) and has published widely on photography and photography theory, photomontage, and mass-circulation magazines. Andrés Mario Zervigón is Associate Professor in the Art History Department at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. He is author of John Heartfield and the Agitated Image: Photography, Persuasion, and the Rise of Avant-Garde Photomontage (2012) and coeditor of Photography and Its Origins (with Sheehan, 2015).

Contents List of figures About the contributors Introduction Sabine T. Kriebel and Andrés Mario Zervigón Prelude Three or Four Kinds of Indeterminacy in the Photograph Douglas R. Nickel Part I Between Facticity and Fiction 1 No Room for Doubt? Daguerre and his First Critics Steffen Siegel 2 Blowing Up the World: On the Evidentiary Cultures of Enlargement, ca, 1893-1917 Jordan Bear 3 A Magician Among the Spirit Photographs: Reflections on Houdini's Doubt Louis Kaplan Part II Instabilities of the Medium 4 Reaching Beyond the Index: The Publication of News Photographs Thierry Gervais 5 The Camera Work of the PM Sketch Report Jason E. Hill 6 Robert Capa and the Turn to Forensics Vincent Lavoie Part III From Aporia to Anomie: Photography Deconstructed 7 Moholy's Doubt Susan Laxton 8 Max Ernst: Graceful Photographer Adrian Sudhalter 9 Atomisation, Anomie and Farewell to Photography Sarah Kelleher Part IV Indeterminacy 10 Controlling Doubt: Abstract Painting and Photography John J. Curley 11 Clouded Judgment: Conceptual Art, Photography and the Discourse of Doubt Heather Diack 12 Methodological Position for Second Degree Art History Robert Slifkin Selected Bibliography Index