American Exposures : Photography and Community in the Twenteith Century.

We cite from the cover: -
"American Exposures sheds light on photographs, from Arthur Mole's propagandistic "living photographs" of American icons and symbols to the exploration of contemporary subcultural communities by the Korean-born photographer and performance artist Nikki Lee, and asserts that the depiction of community is a central component to photography. Louis Kaplan deploys a number of critical concepts and theories developed by Jean-Luc Nancy in The Inoperative Community, as well as other philosophers, and applies them to the field of photography studies. With an original approach to photography from Edward Steichen's Family of Man exhibition to Pedro Meyer and the rise of the digital image, Kaplan points to a new way to think about the intimate relationship among photography, American life, and the artistic imagination."
LOUIS KAPLAN is associate professor of history and theory of photography and new media in the Graduate Department of History of Art at the University of Toronto; he also coordinates the Visual Culture and Communication program at the University of Toronto at Mississauga. He is the author of Laszló Moholy-Nagy: Biographical Writings.
"Without minimizing their differences, Louis Kaplan examines a heterogeneous set of works to demonstrate the many links between the practice of photography and endless efforts to delineate concepts of community. Few studies could be more relevant for rethinking the role of photography in the 'American' twentieth century." —SALLY STEIN, university of California, irvine
Contents :
0. Introduction: Community--Exposed Pphotography ;
1. "Living Photographs" and the Formation of National Community: Reviewing the Troops with Mole, Goldbeck, and Company ;
2. "We Don't Know": Archibald MacLeish's Land of the Free and the Question of American Community ;
3. Photo Globe: The Family of Man and the Global Rhetoric of Photography ;
4. Photography and the Exposure of Community: Reciting Nan Goldin's Ballad ;
5. Community in Fragments: Romare Bearden's Projections and the Interruption of Myth ;
6. Slashing toward Diaspora: On Frederic Brenner's jews/america/a representation ;
7. Digital Chicanos: Pedro Meyer, Truths & Fictions, and Border Theory ;
8. Performing Community: Nikki S. Lee's Photographic Rites of Passing ;
Notes ;
Index.