Publisher's Synopsis
Framed by Terry Smith's introduction, the essays focus on two kinds of strangeness involved in experiencing visual images in the modern era. The first, explored in the book's first half, involves the appearance of oddities or phantasmagoria in early photographs and cinema. The second type of strangeness involves art from marginalized groups and indigenous peoples, and the communicative formations that result from the trafficking of images between people from vastly different cultures. With a stellar list of contributors, Impossible Presence offers a wide-ranging look at the fate of the visual image in modernity, modern art, and popular culture.
Contributors:
Jean Baudrillard
Marshall Berman
Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe
Elizabeth Grosz
Tom Gunning
Peter Hutchings
Fred R. Myers
Javier Sanjines
Richard Shiff
Hugh J. Silverman
Terry Smith