Photography is Magic
Charlotte Cotton
Aperture
English
Softcover
384 pages
226 x 261 mm
2015
ISBN 9781597113311
Photography Is Magic draws together current ideas about the use of photography as an invaluable medium in the contemporary art world. Edited and with an essay by leading photography writer and curator Charlotte Cotton, this critical publication surveys the work of a diverse group of artists, many working at the borders of the “art world” and the “photography world,” all of whom are engaged with experimental ideas concerning photographic practice and its place in a shifting photographic landscape being reshaped by digital techniques. Readers are shown the scope of photographic possibilities in the context of the contemporary creative process. From Michele Abeles and Walead Beshty to Daniel Gordon and Matthew Lipps, Cotton has selected artists who are consciously reframing photographic practices using mixed media, appropriation and a recalibration of analog processes. Cotton brings these artists together around the idea of magic, the properties of illusion and material transformation that uniquely characterise photography. Beautifully produced and critically rigorous, Photography Is Magic is aimed at younger photo aficionados, students and anyone interested in gaining a deeper understanding of contemporary photography. It includes images and text by more than 80 artists, including Sara Cwynar, Shannon Ebner, Annette Kelm, Josh Kline, Elad Lassry, Jon Rafman, Shirana Shahbazi and Sara VanDerBeek, among many others.
(source: https://aperture.org/books/photography-is-magic/)
About the Artist
Charlotte Cotton (born 1970) is an independent curator of and writer about photography. She has held positions including Head of the Wallis Annenberg Photography Department at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Head of Programming at The Photographers’ Gallery, London, Creative Director at the National Media Museum, UK, Curator of Photography at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, Curator in Residence at the Katonah Museum of Art, NY, and Curator in Residence for International Center of Photography’s new museum and events space, 250 Bowery.
Cotton has curated a number of exhibitions on contemporary photography and her publications include The Photograph as Contemporary Art, Imperfect Beauty, Then Things Went Quiet, Guy Bourdin, and Photography is Magic. She is also the founder of wordswithoutpictures.org (2008-9) and EitherAnd.org (2012). Words Without Pictures was published as a print and eBook by Aperture in 2010.
(source: https://www.lensculture.com/charlotte-cotton)
About the Publisher
Aperture, a not-for-profit foundation, is a magazine and photography organisation. Created in 1952 by photographers and writers as ‘common ground for the advancement of photography,’ Aperture today is a multi-platform publisher and center for the photo community. From their base in New York, we produce, publish, and present a program of photography projects, locally and internationally.
aperture.org
(source: https://aperture.org/about/)
