The second volume in the Skira “Photography” series serving as a major reference in the field. The 50 years of artistic and mass photography taken into consideration in this volume are unquestionably the most important in the twentieth century. The acceleration of technological progress, the advent of the era of the machine and the metropolis, the epoch-making economic crisis, the dramatic aftermath of the collapse of the old nineteenth-century order in Europe with political upheavals, wars, revolutions and dictatorships, the first appearance of a mass society capable of expressing cultures and systems of communication in line with its needs: these are the most obvious stages of a history that was also recorded as it happened, in various forms and media. Among these, key importance certainly attaches to photography. It is evident that mankind had never before been in possession of an instrument capable of supplying such an enormous number of images of such universal accessibility as regards both visibility and creation. The Kodak camera, a device anyone could use, and the popular illustrated press are the two cornerstones of this aspect of the photographic history of the twentieth century. This richly illustrated book – complete with synoptic tables and a summary glossary – offers a wide-ranging survey of this era that will delight and inform a constantly growing audience.
