Burning with Desire The Conception of Photography

by Batchen, Geoffrey

• ISBN13: 9780262522595
• ISBN10: 0262522594
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1999-03-15
• Publisher: The MIT Press

Summary

In an 1828 letter to his partner, Nicéphore Niépce, Louis Daguerre wrote, "I am burning with desire to see your experiments from nature." In this book, Geoffrey Batchen analyzes the desire to photograph as it emerged within the philosophical and scientific milieus that preceded the actual invention of photography. Recent accounts of photography's identity tend to divide between the postmodern view that all identity is determined by context and a formalist effort to define the fundamental characteristics of photography as a medium. Batchen critiques both approaches by way of a detailed discussion of photography's conception in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. He examines the output of the various nominees for "first photographer," then incorporates this information into a mode of historical criticism informed by the work of Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida. The result is a way of thinking about photography that persuasively accords with the mediums undeniable conceptual, political, and historical complexity.

Author Biography

Geoffrey Batchen is Professor of the History of Photography and Contemporary Art at the City University of New York Graduate Center. He is the author of Burning with Desire: The Conceptions of Photography (1999) and Each Wild Idea: Writing, Photography, History (2002), both published by the MIT Press.

Table of Contents

Preface
Identity	p. 2
Conception	p. 22
Desire	p. 54
Pictures	p. 104
Method	p. 174
Epitaph	p. 204
Notes	p. 218
Index	p. 268
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