Art Photography Now

Art Photography Now met exactly my expectations

This was a present.

a gift to my grand daughter studying at Uni. She finds it very good

Bought this for university to finish my degree with

Highly recommend and great reference book

Firstly, I'd give this a 3 if it weren't such good value in terms of paper and ink compared to many photo books. As others have described, the book features a sectioned approach to the big hitters in art and contemporary photography from the last 30 or so years, in fact, in some cases I was surprised to see such old work from (excellent) artists like Sugimoto. Images from the 70's aren't very NOW as the book might have you expect, even if they are lovely! Reproductions are good throughout and it covers a wide range of styles and genres, like most photography books it has a strong European and American bias, but that's nothing new. My complaint with the book would be that it could certainly cover some newer, emerging talent, while the book covers many artists you wouldn't see on the shelves of Waterstones it's by no means packed with obscure young talent in need of exposure, pun not intended. The other issue for me is the text, it's both typographically poor, in that it's MASSIVE and poorly laid out, it's also very thin on conceptual detail and depth. Won't be a problem for everyone, but I'd have liked to see more. That aside, for it's current very low price it serves as a great introduction to a fascinating area the arts, just don't expect too much. Should you be interested in a more comprehensive survey of modern photography try and track down a copy of Vitamin Ph, which is excellent. Or better yet support British journals such as Photoworks and Source!

Great book for a photography student or amateur

Too many images are of doubtful value and oddly included so that the book as a whole lacks authority and the idea of art deployed is inexplicable.

It is difficult to find good contemporary photography overviews -- typically, you could go to galleries or museums for several years or buy a stack of art photography books and spend days going through them -- assuming you had a strong Art background. This book offers a nice alternative and it is one of the best overviews of contemporary fine art photography available. Aperture, a respected photography publishing house, has beautifully produced this handsome book with 80 of what they consider to be the best living and working art photographers. The selection is broad, encompasses many areas and is well organized into 7 sections from Portrait to City. Several works from each artist are presented along with a short description of an artist's Work from a curator's perspective. Even more valuable are quotations from each artist describing their Work from their perspective. This alone makes the book worth owning. Photographers you might know; Cindy Sherman, Thomas Ruff, Gregory Crewdson, Jeff Wall, Uta Barth, Joel Sternfeld, Thomas Demand and many others are alongside people you have probably never heard of but should get to know. The coverage of the cinematic, self exploration/psychological, conceptual and to some extent digital influences presented here should be thought provoking. Clearly, the "digitalness" of photography as a medium and all that implies -- interaction and collaboration, manipulation and realism, and authenticity and authority -- is growing in importance and will no doubt be better covered in the future as those artists emerge. There are only two omissions that would have been interesting to see included; artists such as Gerhard Richter, best known for his painting and who uses photography extensively -- and some of the newest up and comers, like Idris Khan. To be fair, those areas are rich enough to support separate books and you should not let this keep you from buying this book. Overall, this is an excellent way to quickly learn about contemporary photography and you will not be disappointed.

i temi sono affrontati in modo chiaro e sintetico, offrendo un interessante spunto di studio, più che di giudizio; la grafica accattivante e il grande formato valorizzano molto le fotografie, facilitando una giusta contemplazione delle immagini; altro punto a favore, tornando alla suddivisione delle parti, è che proprio ciò lo rende un libro di facile consultazione, ovvero senza l'"obbligo" di una lettura propedeutica, per poter affrontare/consultare liberamente ogni singola parte a sé.

Art Photography Now by Susan Bright looks at modern photography in a way that's easy to understand. It talks about lots of different photographers and the interesting things they're doing with pictures. The book is organized by different ideas, showing a wide variety of photographs and explaining what makes them special. Susan Bright writes about each photographer, helping us get why their images are appealing. Susan Bright's writing is easy to follow, and she helps us understand things about photography without making it too hard. Whether you love taking pictures or you're just curious, Art Photography Now is a fun book that shows you lots of awesome photos and helps you see why they're so interesting.

Ms. Bright provides truly wonderful text and insight into some quite diverse photographers. The photo illustrations are bright (no pun intended) and large. With fewer photographers or illustrations she might have been able to provide more information about the genre, photographer or concept but then I am a visualist and seeing the images alongside her breakdown of them is an immense help to my own progress.

I ordered this as a text book for my Intermediate Photography course. This books was extremely helpful for inspiring my work and helping me understand my own process of taking photographs. It also really helped during critiques to reference other artists currently working in the field of photography.