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Photography Photoessays & Documentaries

Scissors, Paper, Stone

Expressions of Memory in Contemporary Photographic Art

by (author) Martha Langford

Publisher
McGill-Queen's University Press
Initial publish date
Aug 2012
Category
Photoessays & Documentaries
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9780773540781
    Publish Date
    Aug 2012
    List Price
    $45.95
  • Hardback

    ISBN
    9780773532113
    Publish Date
    Jun 2007
    List Price
    $85.00
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9780773576865
    Publish Date
    Jun 2007
    List Price
    $65.00

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Description

Finalist: Raymond Klibansky Book Prize Humanities and Social Sciences Federation of Canada (2008) Making a connection between photography and memory is almost automatic. Should it be? In Scissors, Paper, Stone Martha Langford explores the nature of memory and art. She challenges the conventional emphasis on the camera as a tool of perception by arguing that photographic works are products of the mind - picturing memory is, first and foremost, the expression of a mental process. Langford organizes the book around the conceit of the child's game scissors, paper, stone, using it to ground her discussion of the tensions between remembering and forgetting, the intersection of memory and imagination, and the relationship between memory and history. Scissors, Paper, Stone explores the great variety of photographic art produced by Canadian artists as expressions of memory. Their work, including images by Carl Beam, Carole Condé and Karl Beveridge, Donigan Cumming, Stan Denniston, Robert Houle, Robert Minden, Michael Snow, Diana Thorneycroft, Jeff Wall, and Jin-me Yoon, is presented as part of a rich interdisciplinary study of contemporary photography and how it has shaped modern memory.

About the author

Martha Langford is research chair and director of the Gail and Stephen A. Jarislowsky Institute for Studies in Canadian Art at Concordia University and author of Suspended Conversations: The Afterlife of Memory in Photographic Albums.

Martha Langford's profile page

Editorial Reviews

"Langford advances an uncommonly rich conception of memory, and Scissors, Paper, Stone is an important contribution to the growing scholarship on Canadian photographic art." TOPIA

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