Photography and Humour

(Paperback)

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Description

The ticklish subject of humour is often on the sidelines of writing about photography, yet photos often entertain us with their wit and visual jokes.

Photography and Humour remedies this situation by providing a history of photographic laughter, gathering together over one hundred images. In this first survey to look at the history of photography through the lens of humour, Louis Kaplan reviews some of the important ways photographers from the mid-1800s to today have found humour in the world, and how viewers have found amusement in photographs.

Reviews

Kaplans book serves as an accessible, insightful, critical history of photographys relationship to humour, one that focuses on the mediums role in social life . . . Kaplan takes a more expansive view of photographic publics and situations, reaching across the twentieth century into the twenty-first, and mingling vernacular and fine-art forms, analogue and digital. * Tanya Sheehan, History of Photography *
Kaplan plays fast and loose with both historical and contemporary photography to create a mash-up of style, intention, artistic movements, and meaning. Included are well-known photographic tricksters such as Hippolyte Bayard, Vik Muniz, Martin Parr, and Tony Tasset, but curiously adding to the mix are the likes of Cindy Sherman, Carrie Mae Weems, and Walker Evans. Readers are left with no choice but to hold on and enjoy the wild ride * Choice *
Well written and engaging as a book on humor ought to be, this complex and considered book, unique in photography studies, speaks to a nonspecialist audience and focuses on images that poke fun at some of the key roles and functions of photography, turning humor on the discourse of photography itself. Notable is the authors consistent engagement with and acknowledgement of the work of others, from known theorists to early career scholars, indicative of the generosity that underpins this book as well as its commitment to photographys humanity. Technology and human endeavor are affably intertwined in these pages to reveal both the unbridled levity and deep fear we mobilize to tenuously master the precariousness of our existence. * Sabine T. Kriebel, CAA Reviews *
a witty, insightful and telling story about the many journeys the photographic form has taken through the ages in the context of humour * Arts Illustrated, India *
Whats so funny about photography Louis Kaplan answers this question and many more in this playful and provocative new book. Photography and Humour is a marvelous survey of funny pictures, ranging from the black humour of Hippolyte Bayards 1840 Self-portrait as a Drowned Man to viral internet hoaxes from the past few decades. Writing in lucid and entertaining prose, Kaplan delves deep into the history of the medium, pulling dozens of choice examples from photographys bountiful bag of tricks. * Mia Fineman, Associate Curator, Photographs, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York *
In this excellent addition to a compelling series, Kaplan offers a stirring riposte to photographys traditional association with morbid sensibility, tracing the impact of the medium through a constellation of humorous genres: from vaudeville and slapstick to ridicule, satire and the contrivances of cultural stereotypes yet not forgetting the oddball disquisition on mortality represented by gallows humor. His keen reflections on the work of canonical photographers (Henri Cartier-Bresson, Garry Winogrand, Jeff Wall, among others) is leavened by discussions of lesser-known figures and a buffet of amateur, anonymous or commercial images. Photography is served up, here, with a side of mirth and merriment, sauced with a dash of mayhem. * John C. Welchman, Professor of Art History, University of California San Diego and Chair, Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts *
the first and most welcome comprehensive study on humor in the field of photography research. Kaplan treats both photography and humor as firmly anchored in social practice and deliberately focuses on the manifold ways photographs make fun of the mediums key social functions. Covering a wide range of practices from photographys earliest days to the digital practices of today, he explores how humor destabilizes photographys role in identity formation and identification, in the building of social cohesion and being-togetherness, and finally, how a darker, morbid sense of humor laughs in the face of photographys intimate relationship to death. * Mieke Bleyen and Liesbeth Decan, Introduction to their edited volume Photography Performing Humor *

Author Bio

Louis Kaplan is Professor of History and Theory of Photography and New Media at the University of Toronto. He is the author of Lszl Moholy-Nagy: Biographical Writings (1995), American Exposures: Photography and Community in the Twentieth Century (2005) and The Strange Case of William Mumler, Spirit Photographer (2008).