Reading Photographs

Having held the posts of course leader on both the Visual Arts and History of Art and Visual Culture courses at the University of Gloucestershire, UK, Richard Salkeld is now senior lecturer in the university's Art and Design department, teaching undergraduate students of photography.

Chapter 1: What is a photograph?
Invention: the marriage of chemistry and optics
Time and light
Uses and applications
The camera: an evolution
Case study: Chuck Close

Chapter 2: Reading the signs
Where do meanings come from?
Language: words, sounds and images
Semiotics: the study of signs
Ideology: ideas, practices and beliefs
Case study: Anthony Barrett

Chapter 3: Truth and lies
What is ‘real’?
Representation and reality
Facts and fiction
Case study: Thomas Hoepker

Chapter 4: Identity
People and portraits
Signifying identity
Looking
The body
Case study: Marc Garanger

Chapter 5: Big Brother is watching you
The modern world
The bad, the mad and the ‘other’
Surveillance society: the Panopticon
Who is looking at whom?
Public spaces – private lives
Case study: Shizuka Yokomizo

Chapter 6: Aesthetics
But is it art?
Photography cannot be art
What is art?
Photography as art – the history of an idea
Into postmodernism
Case study: Richard Billingham

Conclusion
Bibliography
References
Index
Picture credits
Acknowledgements