Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #505392 in Books
• Published on: 2005-11-01
• Format: Bargain Price
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 128 pages

From Publishers Weekly
The digital photography revolution may have taken place somewhat secretively inside dark boxes-cameras and computers-but the impact of digital photography, which is the subject of photographer and educator Lipkin's thorough introduction to the medium, has yet to be fully realized. Since its invention, photography has been a tool to both authenticate and manipulate experience. It is precisely this paradox that has made the medium so intriguing for critics, historians, photographers and viewers. But photography has never been as untrustworthy as it is now, and, according to Lipkin, it has also never been as creative. In accessible prose, Lipkin illustrates how digital photography has expanded the medium's expressive potential, ultimately bringing it closer to painting. This new definition of photography is supported by illustrations that range from abstract to realist to fantastical, with an emphasis on more challenging, if not creepy, images. The inclusion of computer-generated, digital images that appear to be photographs, but are not, such as visual representations of subatomic structures and avatars, may seem unwarranted, but fit Lipkin's idea that photography's authority and meaning have radically changed. Lipkin takes some provocative and challenging stances, such as arguing that we have reverted to a 19th-century way of seeing with this new technology, making for an intriguing read.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Customer Reviews

Nice survey; not so great otherwise
Having recently read Susan Bright (Art Photography Now) and Charlotte Cotton (The Photograph As Contemporary Art), I can vouch that Lipkin avoids the deliberately opaque writing style his peers employ. And he seems to have some interesting ideas about how artists change with technology.

Unfortunately those ideas are often buried in thematic blubber. Lipkin's chapters are amorphous, no clear idea emerging through. He never fully says what a chapter is and why the photos are tied in. For instance, many of the photos in "The Body Electric" would seem more tied to "Portraiture in the Digital Age", at least going by the names. It would seem that clear sentences and an insightful writer would ensure a good book. Unfortunately, the lack of a decent editor standing over Lipkin's shoulder, telling him to define his ideas, predominates.

Still, you'll be exposed to 30 or so really great artists and some interesting points of view. One of his ideas--that Jennycam represented some major change in image-making and photography--was particularly annoying to me, as the accompanying J-cam images are artless and careless. Photography implies some vision sculpting an individual image; Jennicam was shapeless and random. That said, I appreciate Lipkin's provocation, here and elsewhere.

The book concludes with a tedious and, again, poorly defined history of digital photography (at one point Lipkin says the first digital image was created in 1957; then later says "the earliest digital images ... actually preceded the growth of electronic communication", the phone having been widely known for 50 years earlier). Given a chance to tie his disparate chapters together, Lipkin unwisely skimps on his bread-and-butter (theory) and instead emphasizes mechanical processes.

Persuasive but not very inspiring!
This book achieves what it sets out to do, but I was disappointed in the author's uncritical enthusiasm. The survey of artists who use digital manipulation to make creative images is not very inspiring. The reproductions are high quality but there is much better work (pictures) out there being published. The text is even less inspiring because the author is so sold on digital imaging that he seems to be selling digital cameras and even sings the praises of cell phone cameras.

I agree that digital images are much easier to make and hence many more images are probably being made now than in the past, but the author doesn't seem to see much value in the sparkling resolution and breathtaking contrast of traditional hand-made prints from film, compared to the relatively flat digital prints the industry is trying to sell people. The author repeats commercial claims about the supposed quality of digital images but such claims have not been confirmed by independent tests.

Instead of technical virtuosity in the medium we are supposed to settle for aesthetic rhetoric about the thought-provoking nature of what are often uninteresting and unrealistic subjects. Digital imaging is certainly cleaner and more convenient than traditional photography, but let's not confuse those qualities with the vividness of a chemically processed transparency or silver or platinum print.

Modern abstract art has been criticized as a more efficient (cheaper) way to mass produce paintings for sale, and digital images can be accused of the same thing. This book is an uncritical look at the digital revolution, and that is not very educational.

A tour-de-force of What Can Be Done
The one thing you can say about digital photography is that it is certainly changing fast. And in this book Mr. Lipkin shows what a series of what you might call photographer/artists have done using digital images and computer manipulation of those images.

In many cases, you might view these images as closer to paintings than photographs. In other cases, the images are of things that we cannot see ourselves, MRI images from inside the skull of a living person, mountains on the surface of Venus. Other images are from somewhere in the mind of the producer. These might be composite pictures of several people, these might be images that start with a photograph but which now are so distorted and colors so changed that their origin is difficult to see.

This is not a book of techniques, it is a book of results, of ideas from the minds of people who are carrying digital photography into new areas.