Why Photography Matters as Art as Never Before

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May 27, 2009

Michael Fried Why Photography Matters as Art as Never Before New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008. 410 pp.; 70 color ills.; 90 b/w ills. Cloth $55.00 (9780300136845)

Matthew Biro

CrossRef DOI: 10.3202/caa.reviews.2009.52

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Two related projects are combined in Michael Fried’s well-observed, conceptually ambitious, and beautifully written new book, Why Photography Matters as Art as Never Before. First, the text presents a formal and theoretical justification of tableau photography since the late 1970s, arguing that the large-scale art photography of Jeff Wall, Thomas Struth, Jean-Marc Bustamante, Luc Delahaye, Thomas Ruff, Andreas Gursky, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Rineke Dijkstra, Beat Streuli, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Candida Höfer, Thomas Demand, and Bernd and Hilla...