I have not quite finished reading this book yet and I think it will take me some time to mull it over and reflect on what it offers when I do finish it. A few things have already struck me though. I do not have any issue with the notion of photography being part of the contemporary art field, which is perhaps why, on occasion, I found this book a little frustrating. I think the old notions of distinct artforms and sectors are becoming increasingly redundant as the boundaries are blurred by practice. Artists and other creatives are regularly working across forms and do not recognise the arbitrary boundaries that are often imposed by funding, the gallery system or other external policy structures.

To be fair it is made clear in the introduction that the aim of the book is to ‘work as a survey, the kind of overview you might experience if you visited exhibitions in a range of venues…’ (Cotton, 2009: 7)

The themes are wide ranging from storytelling and emotions to materiality and documentary. Reading Cotton’s background my sense of the chapters being a series of ‘curations’ starts to make sense, they feel like a number of shows that have coalesced under the banner of contemporary art. I would really have liked to have heard more from Cotton herself in terms of why some of her choices were made; how the themes evolved and what made her select the photographers/artists she did. You do get glimpses of this as you read through but I would have preferred it to have been more overt.

I will keep reading and see what else surfaces.

Reference:

Cotton, C. (2009). The photograph as contemporary art (2nd ed.). London: Thames & Hudson.