Reframing Photography: Theory And Practice

The Reframing Photography: Theory and Practice book and website are about photography in the widest possible sense of the word. Each presents a broad and inclusive rethinking of conceptual and technical aspects of photography across time periods, across themes, and through varied materials. Essays and how-to sections provide ideas, information, and inspiration for artists who use photography in varied ways.

The book brings photographic education up to date with contemporary art practice. Essays link photographic conventions with a history of ideas, involving such topics as architecture, literature, psychology, and genetics, and introduce related artists and artworks. How-to sections describe an extensive range of processes, such as viewing devices (including multiple types of cameras, scanners, and the human eye), lighting methods, low-tech ways to reproduce images, film and digital processing, digital, darkroom and manual editing and printing, book arts, pre-cinematic animation techniques, web arts, collage, light box construction, web portfolios, internet art, and more.

Consult this website to view contemporary artists talk about their practice (the In Their Own Words series in our Artists' Gallery), to view step-by-step video tutorials, to read about additional photographic processes, to locate artists’ works, resources, readings, and opportunities through our Resources of over a thousand web links, and (if you are an instructor) to discover class projects related to book topics or recommended by educators.

How-to sections on the web describe information about such topics as projection, lighting, image transfers, color printing, framing, and book and portfolio construction.

• View the Tutorials