The Grotesque in Photography
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
"The main tributaries of the river of the grotesque in photography, then, have been these:
"Les Krims, Jeffrey Silverthorne, Manuel Alvarez Bravo, Marion Faller, Emmet Gowin, and Paul Diamond have also photographed the carcasses of animals. Diamond's ferocious close-up of a set of snarling dog teeth bared in a rictus of death (page 69) is such a "found" event, as is Gowin's "Butchering, Near Chatham, Va." (pages 34-35)." "All life is only a set of pictures in the brain, among which there is no difference betwixt those born of real things and those born of inward dreamings, and no cause to value the one above the other."-- H. P. Lovecraft, "The Silver Key", epigram "As recently as 1953 ... William M. Ivins called photography the first visual medium "without syntax." |
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The Grotesque in Photography[1] (1977, New York: Summit, Ridge Press) is a book by A. D. Coleman which explores the grotesque sensibility in photography.
Blurb:
- "a first collection of photographers whose fantastic visions of life are as revolutionary as those of the impressionists."
Selection of images
- The Deerslayers by Les Krims
- Post-mortem daguerreotypes of children
- Photographers of the American Civil War
- Nick Ut
- Tom Howard's unauthorized photograph of the electrocution of convicted murderer Ruth Snyder
- War photography and forensic photography
- Alexander Gardner's series on the hanging of the Lincoln conspirators
- Jesse James's body[2] by A. A. Hughes
- O. G. Rejlander's "Fear"
- Louis Ducos du Hauron's self portraits
- Charles D. Fredricks
- "George Platt Lynes, Erwin Blumenfeld, Nikolas Muray, Irving Penn, Paul Outerbridge, and more recently Helmut Newton, Guy Bourdin, Deborah Turbeville, and Chris von Wangenheim have all entered the territory of the grotesque."
Mentions
- The Grotesque in Art and Literature
- Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage
See also