Before-and-After Photography Histories and Contexts

by Bear, Jordan; Albers, Kate Palmer

• ISBN13: 9781474253116
• ISBN10: 1474253113
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2017-09-21
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic

Summary

The before-and-after trope in photography has long paired images to represent change: whether affirmatively, as in the results of makeovers, social reforms or medical interventions, or negatively, in the destruction of the environment by the impacts of war or natural disasters.

This interdisciplinary multi-authored volume examines the central but almost unspoken position of before-and-after photography found in a wide range of contexts from the 19th century through to the present. Packed with case studies that explore the conceptual implications of these images, the book's rich language of evidence, documentation and persuasion present both historical material and the work of practicing photographers who have deployed – and challenged – the conventions of the before-and-after pairing.

Touching on issues including sexuality, race, environmental change and criminality, Before-and-After Photography examines major topics of current debate in the critique of photography in an accessible way to allow students and scholars to explore the rich conceptual issues around photography's relationship with time and imagination.

Author Biography

Jordan Bear is Assistant Professor of Art History at the University of Toronto, Canada. He is the author of Disillusioned: Victorian Photography and the Discerning Subject (2015).

Kate Palmer Albers is Assistant Professor in the Art History Division at the University of Arizona, USA. Her book, Uncertain Histories: Accumulation, Inaccessibility, and Doubt in Contemporary Photography is forthcoming.

Table of Contents

1. Photography's Time Zones
Kate Palmer Albers, University of Arizona, USA and Jordan Bear, University of Toronto, Canada

Part I. Medical Restorations and Enhancements

2. Before and After: The Aesthetic as Evidence in 19th Century Medical Photography
Susan Sidlauskas, Rutgers, State University of New Jersey, USA

3. Imaging the Criminal Body: 'Faces of Meth' and Galton's Composite Photographs
Kristen M. Thomas-McGill

Part II. Landscape and the Built Environment

4. Noise Abatement Zone: John Divola's Photographic Fulcrum
Jason E. Hill, University of Delaware, USA

5. The Elusive Event: An Interview between Frank Gohlke and Rebecca Senf
Rebecca Senf, Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona, USA

Part III. Manmade and Natural Disasters

6. Beyond Images of Melting Ice: Hidden Stories of People, Place, and Time in Repeat Photography of Glaciers
Mark Carey, Robert D. Clark Honors College, University of Oregon, USA and Rodney Garrard, University of Bern, Switzerland

7. Natural Cycles: Naoya Hatakeyama's Photographs of the 2011 Tohoku Tsunami
Lisa Sutcliffe, Milwaukee Art Museum, USA

Part IV. Social "Improvements": Assimilation and Reform

8. Staging Emancipation: Race and Reconstruction in American Photographic Humor
Tanya Sheehan, Colby College, USA

p. Facing the Binary: Native American Students in the Camera's Lens
Jacqueline Fear-Segal, University of East Anglia, UK

Part V. From Two to Three: Before-and-After Time, Complicated

10. Beyond 'This-Caused-That': The Temporal Complexities of Before-and-After Photographs
Kris Belden-Adams, University of Mississippi, USA

Afterword
James Elkins, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, USA