| Unstable Ground: Photography books and the modern landscape, 1938-1975, pursues research in the following areas: the ways in which photography affects our understanding of landscape, the importance of reproductive media to photography, and the unique institutional history of photography. In Unstable Ground, the author considers publications from Walker Evans, Robert Frank, Ed Ruscha, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Lewis Baltz and Judy Fiskin, and uses them to argue that photography books represent the modernization of photography in a twofold manner. First, in displaying a body of work, these books are a means for the author to cohesively present their stylistic intentions. Secondly, these books each deploy a sequence of photographs as a means to constructing critical perspectives on the dynamic social changes of capitalist industrialization in the mid-20th century. Based in readings of key essays by Walter Benjamin ("Little History of Photography") and Walker Evans ("The Reappearance of Photography"), these claims are further evidenced by considering the presentation of photographs in book form, and by understanding these books as historical records of modern social space. While scholarship on the history of photography books is limited, this dissertation aims to show their importance as both historical documents and aesthetic objects. |
