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Photography and the Art of Chance
Photography has a unique relationship to chance. Anyone who has wielded a camera has taken a picture ruined by an ill-timed blink or enhanced by an unexpected gesture or expression. Although this proneness to chance may amuse the casual photographer, Robin Kelsey points out that historically it has been a mixed blessing for those seeking to make photographic art. On the one hand, it has weakened the bond between maker and picture, calling into question what a photograph can be said to say. On the other hand, it has given photography an extraordinary capacity to represent the unpredictable dynamism of modern life. By delving into these matters, Photography and the Art of Chance transforms our understanding of photography and the work of some of its most brilliant practitioners.
The effort to make photographic art has involved a call and response across generations. From the introduction of photography in 1839 to the end of the analog era, practitioners such as William Henry Fox Talbot, Julia Margaret Cameron, Alfred Stieglitz, Frederick Sommer, and John Baldessari built upon and critiqued one another’s work in their struggle to reconcile aesthetic aspiration and mechanical process. The root problem was the technology’s indifference, its insistence on giving a bucket the same attention as a bishop and capturing whatever wandered before the lens. Could such an automatic mechanism accommodate imagination? Could it make art? Photography and the Art of Chance reveals how daring innovators expanded the aesthetic limits of photography to create art for a modern world.
The effort to make photographic art has involved a call and response across generations. From the introduction of photography in 1839 to the end of the analog era, practitioners such as William Henry Fox Talbot, Julia Margaret Cameron, Alfred Stieglitz, Frederick Sommer, and John Baldessari built upon and critiqued one another’s work in their struggle to reconcile aesthetic aspiration and mechanical process. The root problem was the technology’s indifference, its insistence on giving a bucket the same attention as a bishop and capturing whatever wandered before the lens. Could such an automatic mechanism accommodate imagination? Could it make art? Photography and the Art of Chance reveals how daring innovators expanded the aesthetic limits of photography to create art for a modern world.
- GenresPhotographyArt
416 pages, Hardcover
First published May 12, 2015
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
February 14, 2025
This book was a b**** to get through and for as much as I liked the overarching message, I hated the way it was presented. This was not written to be read. It was giving “how many SAT vocab words can I fit into this sentence???”
I will say one stand out chapter that dropped the inaccessible language was the one on Cartier-Bresson—I wish the whole book had been written like that. I do think I learned a lot about the history of photography which was helpful to me, and this presented a lot of resources I want to add to my reading list.
I will say one stand out chapter that dropped the inaccessible language was the one on Cartier-Bresson—I wish the whole book had been written like that. I do think I learned a lot about the history of photography which was helpful to me, and this presented a lot of resources I want to add to my reading list.
July 14, 2015
This book got a starred review in PW, April 6, 2015; always interested in the interplay of chance, I ordered it.
The structure of the book develops the role of chance within a history of photography, from Fox Talbot through Julia Margaret Cameron, Alfred Stieglitz, Frederick Sommer, to John Baldessari. "This book is devoted to the work of a handful [of the medium's greatest practitioners]. It interprets their photographs and texts in light of the entangled histories of photography, art, and chance to discover whatever insights this work may proffer" (3), an unfortunate stylistic start. There is a good deal of cultural history introduced with the discussion of vapor, the rural chimney smoke, fog and London environment, Whistler and Ruskin, "La Gare St.-Lazare," metropolitan street-paving (Stieglitz), as a means of obscuring scenes, reflecting industrial change, and introducing readings of photographs and paintings.
Kelsey hits her stride, as one might suspect, in the final chapters, "Pressing Photography into a Modernist Mold, c. 1970" and "John Baldessari Plays the Fool," in which the material and her comfort with theory allow her to make associations, read photographs, and draw historical parallel that were more strained earlier.
Generally, I was, however, disappointed, not so much by the information, but by the writing. Despite being a Belknap/HUP product, it is repetitive, patronizing (restating information from quotations: e.g., 216, 221, 258), over-interpretative as in the worst kind of literary criticism with unlikely connections and strained meanings (180, 187). All along, I was looking for the sources of theory that might lead Prof Kelsey away from specifics and into an intellectual wonderland; finally, on p 227, Rosalind Krauss appears, to be followed by Jacques Lacan (234), then, Saussure (301). I am not averse to "theory," having taught and used it, but still need a firm basis in "fact," i.e., the writer/photographer's version of what he or she is trying to accomplish. Kelsey does refer to the writings of Dimock, Stieglitz, and others, but not in a manner that would limit her flights of fancy.
This is not a book to which I would return.
The structure of the book develops the role of chance within a history of photography, from Fox Talbot through Julia Margaret Cameron, Alfred Stieglitz, Frederick Sommer, to John Baldessari. "This book is devoted to the work of a handful [of the medium's greatest practitioners]. It interprets their photographs and texts in light of the entangled histories of photography, art, and chance to discover whatever insights this work may proffer" (3), an unfortunate stylistic start. There is a good deal of cultural history introduced with the discussion of vapor, the rural chimney smoke, fog and London environment, Whistler and Ruskin, "La Gare St.-Lazare," metropolitan street-paving (Stieglitz), as a means of obscuring scenes, reflecting industrial change, and introducing readings of photographs and paintings.
Kelsey hits her stride, as one might suspect, in the final chapters, "Pressing Photography into a Modernist Mold, c. 1970" and "John Baldessari Plays the Fool," in which the material and her comfort with theory allow her to make associations, read photographs, and draw historical parallel that were more strained earlier.
Generally, I was, however, disappointed, not so much by the information, but by the writing. Despite being a Belknap/HUP product, it is repetitive, patronizing (restating information from quotations: e.g., 216, 221, 258), over-interpretative as in the worst kind of literary criticism with unlikely connections and strained meanings (180, 187). All along, I was looking for the sources of theory that might lead Prof Kelsey away from specifics and into an intellectual wonderland; finally, on p 227, Rosalind Krauss appears, to be followed by Jacques Lacan (234), then, Saussure (301). I am not averse to "theory," having taught and used it, but still need a firm basis in "fact," i.e., the writer/photographer's version of what he or she is trying to accomplish. Kelsey does refer to the writings of Dimock, Stieglitz, and others, but not in a manner that would limit her flights of fancy.
This is not a book to which I would return.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews