The Passionate Camera: Photography and Bodies of Desire [Paperback]

Deborah Bright (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0415145821 | ISBN-13: 978-0415145824 | Publication Date: October 17, 1998

The Passionate Camera brings together over fifty artists, scholars and critics to address a broad range of issues in photography and sexuality. The authors address the importance of reinterpreting historical works by known homosexual photographers, issues in contemporary photography and sexual diversity, and the use and abuse of photographs of sexual subjects in current political campaigns and direct activism. The Passionate Camera features color and black and white illustrations of works by artists such as Ajamu, Catherine Opie, Lyle Ashton, Yasumasa Morimura, John O'Reilly and Sunil Gupta. For the first time, these works have been gathered together in a lucid and accessible critical context, making The Passionate Camera the pre-eminent source on queer and sex-radical photography at the end of the twentieth century.

Editorial Reviews

Review

The Passionate Camera is fairly equally oriented toward queer male and female imagery.
–Feminist Bookstore News, Januanry/February 1999

The Passionate Camera provides vibrant, rigorous and pleasurable readings of sex work in the practice of photography and the filed of photographic criticism of recent years..It is Bright's role as creative and shrewd editor that makes The Passionate Camera such an exceptional volume. The book has an inner consistency that is uncommon in anthologies; the different essays flow into one another in a productive and lyrical manner. The three sections are metered by provocative photo essays and end with pointed short stories by artist and writer Catherine Lord.
–afterimage, March/April 1999

The Passionate Camera . . . departs from the stale formula of academic publishing and provides vibrant, rigorous and pleasurable readings of sex work in the practice of photography and the field of photographic criticism of recent years . . . [Bright's] extraordinary introduction to the volume succeeds in its formidable task of making sense of the past 15 years of photography and queer cultural politics. . . . and through this furthers the emergence of queer studies in academia . . . . The Passionate Camera will surely be widely used as an indespensible theoretical and historical document on queer visual culture at the end of the millennium. It has endless potential as a course textbook and library resource. The contributors' confident and committed collective gaze rests on a troubled past and on an unsettling present, but they all reassert the besieged queer body of desire into the future.
–Afterimage, March 1999

The success of this new anthology of images and texts derives from the fact that Deborah Bright is equally gifted as an artist, a teacher, and critical theorist. The cumulative insights of The Passionate Camera are both vibrantly comprehensive and intensely personal; these multi-disciplinary studies map radical approaches to the pungent complexities of photographs that are sexually charged.
–Trevor Fairbrother, Deputy Director of Art, Seattle Art Museum

While engaging the challenge queer politics presents to the status quo, the contributions to The Passionate Camera illuminate the central position that supposed minorities of all kinds hold in contemporary culture. An amazing collection of essays and photographs, the book is a multifaceted exploration of the body, sexuality, and consensus culture that is theoretically smart, beautifully written, and a pleasure to peruse.
–Carol Squires, Senior Editor, American Photo magazine

About the Author

Deborah Bright is Associate Professor of Photography and Art History at the Rhode Island School of Design. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 496 pages
• Publisher: Routledge (October 17, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0415145821
• ISBN-13: 978-0415145824
• Product Dimensions: 9.7 x 7.5 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #142,308 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #54 in Books > Arts & Photography > Photography > Criticism & Essays
  • #78 in Books > Arts & Photography > Photography > History

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fabulous!, October 10, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Passionate Camera: Photography and Bodies of Desire (Paperback)

This is the perfect introduction to recent 'queer' photography - great essays, images, and more. So much I'd been looking for, all in one place. Smart, up-to-the moment, and diverse. So many great artists, some well-known and some not.

5 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars a wierd mix, September 26, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Passionate Camera: Photography and Bodies of Desire (Paperback)

There's some great stuff in this book, especially writing, so it's a pity that so much of the art is so studenty, weak, embarrassing. Self-indulgent to the max. There's a wierd conflict between a more academic, didactic photo/text program, and a more arty thing that leaks out the edges.

Good reads include R Meyer on Mapplethorpe, L Kotz on Nan Goldin, D Joselit on Mark Morrisroe, Thomas Waugh on physique photo, K Brooke on Berenice Abbott, and more. I wish there was more historical work: Florence Henri anyone?? And I wish the guys didn't get so into the sensational "d&a" stuff -- it's embarrassing, especially when the art is so clunky, clunky, clunky.

A wierd thought: many of the guys are academically-trained art historians, and almost none (?) of the women are. What does that say?

A lot of fat could have been trimmed, leaving a leaner, tighter, and cheaper book. Nonetheless, it's about the onlything out there, and I'm glad to see that Routledge is still alive and kicking.