@article{348738,
      recid = {348738},
      author = {Rexer, Lyle.},
      title = {The edge of vision : the rise of abstraction in  photography /},
      publisher = {Aperture :},
      address = {New York :},
      pages = {291 p. :},
      year = {2009},
      abstract = {From the beginning, abstraction has been intrinsic to  photography, and its persistent popularity reveals much  about the medium. The Edge of Vision: The Rise of  Abstraction in Photography is the first book in English to  document this phenomenon and to put it into historical  context, while also examining the diverse approaches  thriving within contemporary photography. Author Lyle Rexer  examines abstraction at pivotal moments, starting with the  inception of photography, when many of the pioneers  believed the camera might reveal other aspects of reality.  The Edge of Vision traces subsequent explorations--from the  Photo-Secessionists, who emphasized process and emotional  expression over observed reality, to Modernist and  Surrealist experiments. In the decades to follow, in  particular from the 1950s through the 1980s, a multitude of  photographers--Edward Weston, Aaron Siskind, Barbara  Kasten, Ellen Carey, and James Welling, among them--took up  abstraction from a variety of positions. Finally, Rexer  explores the influence the history of abstraction exerts on  contemporary thinking about the medium. Many contemporary  artists--most prominently Penelope Umbrico, Michael Fomen,  and Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin--reject classic  definitions of photography's documentary dimension in favor  of other conceptually inflected possibilities, somewhere  between painting and performance art, that include the  manipulation of process and printing. In addition to  Rexer's engagingly written and richly illustrated history,  this volume includes a selection of primary texts from and  interviews with key practitioners and critics, such as  Alvin Langdon Coburn, László Moholy-Nagy, Gottfried Jäger,  Silvio Wolf, and Walead Beshty.},
      url = {http://library.usi.edu/record/348738},
}