Photography and the Art of Chance

This ambitious text, both scholarly and affecting, combines art history, psychology, and the history of philosophy and science into a shrewd exploration of “how meaning is produced in a medium prone to chance.” The book focuses on the work of five photographers who revolutionized the medium through their relationship with chance: William Henry Fox Talbot, Julia Margaret Cameron, Frederick Sommer, John Baldessari, and Alfred Stieglitz. Kelsey, a professor of photography at Harvard, discerningly connects their work to various moments in history from the Victorian era through the 21st century: the move away from determinism in the early 19th century, Darwin’s discoveries concerning random biological variation, and changes in the understanding of social morality, particularly regarding the violence and irrationality of the world wars. Each chapter is steeped in social and cultural history, not only highlighting the work of photographers but also of painters (Caspar David Friedrich, J.M.W. Turner) and critics (John Ruskin, Clement Greenberg, Roland Barthes). Though Kelsey’s primary focus is the development of photography, the end result is a wholly informative, refreshing, and rich perspective on photography and Modernism. [em](May) [/em]