Photography’s Antiquarian Avant Garde: The New Wave in Old Processes
Lyle Rexer

Photography’s Antiquarian Avant-Garde charts the full-blown rebellion of contemporary photographers against the advent of digital photography and their reversion to photographic methods used in the nineteenth century. These photographers seek to reengage the physical facts of photography, its material and processes, by turning to the history of photography for metaphors, technical information, and visual inspiration. The artists in this volume are from all over the world and use a wide array of photographic processes. Among the artists and processes featured are Chuck Close’s daguerreotypes, Sally Mann’s collodion prints, Jayne Hinds Bidaut’s photogram tintypes, Shirine Sharif’s photograms, Gabor Kerekes’s carbon dichromates, and Laurent Millet’s toned silver prints. For these artists, these steps into the past are a way to reimagine and redirect not only the photographic object, but also the act of photography itself.