Photography / Stephen Bull.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Photography now : The structure of this book -- 2. The identity of photography : Fixing the image: the conception of photography ; Modernism: the nature of photography ; Postmodernism: the culture of photography ; The thing itself? The question of indexicality ; Past/present/future: photography and time ; Digital debates: revolution or evolution? ; The photograph as object: materiality ; The photograph as image: dematerialisation ; From fixity to transience: the re-conception of photography -- 3. The meanings of photographs : Understanding semiotics: signs, signifiers and signifieds ; A bag of pasta and a cup of tea: rhetoric of the image ; Fixing meanings: words ; Fixing meanings: contexts ; Fixing meanings: discourses ; Photography and psychoanalysis: the unconscious, fetishism and the uncanny ; Pleasures of looking at photographs: the gaze ; Viewers of photographs: other looks ; Camera Lucida: studium and punctum -- 4. Photography for sale : Photography for selling: advertising and identification ; From selling products to creating atmospheres: advertising photography and image banks ; Photography against selling: subvertising and stencils ; Selling photographs: marketing the media ; Selling photography: mass-marketing the medium ; Selling digital photography: fixed and transient commodities -- 5. Snapshots : Private snapshots: the silent majority of photography ; The nature of snapshots: the snapshooter\'s eye ; The Kodak culture of snapshots: tourism, family and memory ; Phototherapy: the family album and beyond ; Digital snapshots: screens and performance ; Online social networking: snapshots go public -- 6. The photograph as document : Photographs as evidence: portraits and surveillance ; Classification by observation: anthropology and colonialism ; Objective fictions: documentary photography and photojournalism ; Subjective facts: documentary photography in the photobook and gallery ; Shock and awe: war and its aftermath ; Evidence by participants: amateur documents and citizen journalism -- 7. Photographs as art : Pictorialism: photography as painting ; Modernism: \'straight\' photography ; Photography in the modern art gallery: authorship and expression ; Conceptual art: artists using photography ; Postmodernism: the artist as photographer and \'the death of the author\' ; Contemporary art photography: the photographer as artist -- 8. Photographs in fashion : The 1920s to the 1960s: elitism to accessibility ; The 1970s and the 1980s: fantasy -- Into the 1990s: abject realism ; Post-photographic pre-millennial fashion photography: anxiety and desire ; The 2000s: performance art -- 9. Photography and celebrity : The face of celebrity: photographing the famous ; The golden age of celebrity: fame and mass reproduction ; The celebrity close-up: paparazzi photography and fan culture ; The circle of shame: mortification and the age of mass celebrity ; Virtually famous: digital reproduction and online celebrity -- 10. After photography?

Photography explores the photograph in the twenty-first century and its importance as a media form. Stephen Bull considers our media-saturated society and the place of photography in everyday life, introducing the theories used to analyze photographs and exploring the impact of digital technology. Topics covered include: *the identity of photography *the meanings of photographs *photography for sale *snapshots *the photograph as document *photography as art *photographs in fashion *photography and celebrity.