Routledge History of Photography
About the Book Series
This new series will publish research monographs and edited collections focusing on the history and theory of photography. These original, scholarly books may take an art historical, visual studies, or material studies approach. Interdisciplinary books are encouraged.
Women’s Agency and Ontology in Nineteenth-Century Iranian Photography: A Mirror for Princesses
1st Edition
By Staci Gem Scheiwiller
May 29, 2025
This study argues that photographs from Qajar Iran (1785–1925) of harem women, royal women, and public women, such as sex workers, musicians, singers, and dancers, make profound statements on the institution of the harem in a time of flux and modernization. Depictions of the harem in photographs ...
The Domestic Interior and the Self in Contemporary Photography
1st Edition
By Jane Simon
April 13, 2025
By carefully conceptualising the domestic in relation to the self and the photographic, this book offers a unique contribution to both photography theory and criticism, and life-narrative studies. Jane Simon brings together two critical practices into a new conversation, arguing that artists who ...
The Market Photo Workshop in South Africa and the 'Born Free' Generation: Remaking Histories
1st Edition
By Julie Bonzon
April 13, 2025
This study presents the history of the Market Photo Workshop (MPW) in Johannesburg and works produced by its new generation of photography students. Founded in 1989 by internationally renowned documentary photographer David Goldblatt, the MPW has reflected upon South African political struggles ...
Photo Archives and the Place of Photography
1st Edition
Edited
By Geraldine A. Johnson, Deborah Schultz
February 24, 2025
This collection of chapters investigates the effects of mobility and place on a range of photographic archives and explores their potential for cross-disciplinary dialogue. The book explores photographic images used in the study of art, as well as the implications of placing European images of ...
Pre-State Photographic Archives and the Zionist Movement
1st Edition
By Rotem Rozental
January 30, 2025
By entering and critically re-activating the Zionist photographic archive established by the Division of Journalism and Propaganda of the Jewish National Fund, this research examines its rippling impact on civil landscapes prior to 1948 in Palestine, and its lasting impact on the region to date. ...
The Photographic Invention of Whiteness: The Visual Cultures of White Atlantic Worlds
1st Edition
By Stephanie Polsky
January 30, 2025
Focusing on the creation of the concept of Whiteness, this study links early photographic imagery to the development and exploitation that were common in the colonial Atlantic World of the mid-to-late nineteenth century. With the advent of the daguerreotype in the mid-nineteenth century, White ...
Italian Neorealist Photography: Its Legacy and Aftermath
1st Edition
By Antonella Russo
October 08, 2024
This book offers an analysis of the socio-historical conditions of the rise of postwar Italian photography, considers its practices, and outlines its destiny. Antonella Russo provides an incisive examination of Neorealist photography, delineates its periodization, traces its instances and its ...
Eroticism and Photography in 1930s French Magazines: Risqué Shop Windows
1st Edition
By Alix Agret
October 07, 2024
Drawing on a panorama of materials from 1930s France, Eroticism and Photography in 1930s French Magazines takes a new approach to studying a certain type of image from a certain time. Previously untapped by historians, magazines such as Paris Magazine, Paris Sex Appeal, Pages Folles, Pour lire à ...
Photography and Political Repressions in Stalin’s Russia: Defacing the Enemy
1st Edition
By Denis Skopin
October 07, 2024
This book is devoted to the phenomenon of removal of people declared "public enemies" from group photographs in Stalin’s Russia. The book is based on long-term empirical research in Russian archives and includes 57 photographs that are exceptional in terms of historical interest: all these images ...
Diverse Voices in Photographic Albums: “These Are Our Stories”
1st Edition
Edited
By Mary Trent, Kris Belden-Adams
October 04, 2024
Through a variety of case studies by global scholars from diverse academic fields, this book explores photographic-album practices of historically marginalized figures from a range of time periods, geographic locations, and socio-cultural contexts. Their albums' stories span various racial, ethnic,...
Jeff Wall and the Concept of the Picture
1st Edition
By Naomi Merritt
September 02, 2024
This book grapples with fundamental questions about the evolving nature of pictorial representation, and the role photography has played in this ongoing process. These issues are explored through a close analysis of key themes that underpin the photography practice of Canadian artist Jeff Wall and...
The Camera as Actor: Photography and the Embodiment of Technology
1st Edition
Edited
By Amy Cox Hall
September 02, 2024
Looking beyond the impact photographs have on the perpetuation and expression of social norms and stereotypes, and the influence of the act of taking a photograph, this new collection brings together international scholars to examine the camera itself as an actor. Bringing the camera back into ...