Photography and Doubt

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).

‘This outstanding collection of essays sheds new light on photography’s beguilingly complex relationship to the real. In chapters addressing a wide range of topics, from war photography to conceptual art, the authors tease out threads of doubt, paradox, and enigma that run through the history of the medium. One thing is clear: this is a major new contribution to the field.’Mia Fineman, Associate Curator, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA‘Essays in this exciting collection embrace the uncertainties, ambivalences and contradictions that pulse through photography as a medium. Working fearlessly in photography’s grey zone – between construction and referentiality -- contributors offer historically-grounded insights into a range of genres: from war, through spirit, to fine art photography. The only doubt that the volume dispels is that doubt as a category that has hovered over the medium from its inception opens up a productive and original heuristic for future study.’Andrea Noble, Professor of Latin American Studies, University of Durham, UK

• ContentsList of figures About the contributorsIntroductionSabine T. Kriebel and Andrés Mario ZervigónPreludeThree or Four Kinds of Indeterminacy in the PhotographDouglas R. NickelPart I Between Facticity and Fiction1 No Room for Doubt? Daguerre and his First CriticsSteffen Siegel2 Blowing Up the World: On the Evidentiary Cultures of Enlargement, ca, 1893-1917Jordan Bear3 A Magician Among the Spirit Photographs: Reflections on Houdini’s DoubtLouis KaplanPart II Instabilities of the Medium4 Reaching Beyond the Index: The Publication of News PhotographsThierry Gervais5 The Camera Work of the PM Sketch ReportJason E. Hill6 Robert Capa and the Turn to Forensics Vincent LavoiePart III From Aporia to Anomie: Photography Deconstructed7 Moholy’s DoubtSusan Laxton8 Max Ernst: Graceful PhotographerAdrian Sudhalter9 Atomisation, Anomie and Farewell to PhotographySarah KelleherPart IV Indeterminacy10 Controlling Doubt: Abstract Painting and PhotographyJohn J. Curley11 Clouded Judgment: Conceptual Art, Photography and the Discourse of DoubtHeather Diack12 Methodological Position for Second Degree Art History Robert Slifkin Selected BibliographyIndex