The acclaimed author of My Birth asks: can photographs help us live?
A timely and explosive book by acclaimed artist and writer Carmen Winant, Instructional Photography offers an investigation of a genre of photographs Winant calls “instructional.” It asks: can photographs teach, in and of themselves? Alternating between found images and shorter, text-based observations, Winant delves into this category of images through her own collection, understanding them as something beyond, or at least in between, documentary and fine art. Included in the volume are pictures of dog-training techniques, home gynecological exams and sitting Shiva, among many others. The book builds on a presentation that Winant delivered at the MoMA Contemporary Photo Forum in September 2020. Carmen Winant (born 1983) is an artist and writer based in Columbus, Ohio, where she is the Roy Lichtenstein Endowed Chair of Studio Art at Ohio State University. Her recent artist’s books, My Birth and Notes on Fundamental Joy, were published by SPBH Editions, ITI Press and Printed Matter.
Featured image is reproduced from 'Instructional Photography'.
PRAISE AND REVIEWS
1854 Photography
Gem Fletcher
Winant’s book is a moving experience. She takes seemingly ordinary, functional and often transient instructional images and invites us to view them anew.
AnOther
Alex Merola
The brilliance of Winant’s book is in demonstrating how the transient can become transformational.
Photo Eye
Kim Beil
I hungrily turn to art like Winant’s for instruction in life.
Artforum
Cassie Packard
Whether they depict someone building a box or executing a Pap smear, the assembled photographs prompt the viewer to map another body’s somatic knowledge onto their own. Does any other photographic category elicit such an active, even empathic, form of viewership?
Brooklyn Rail
Sarah Moroz
Winant sees the value, both aesthetic and symbolic, in the instructional bracket...By reinvesting what the genre can bestow, it suddenly takes on a new breadth: transitioning from dry inculcation to uncanny narrative ensemble.
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FORMAT: Pbk, 4.25 x 5.75 in. / 96 pgs / 8 color / 40 b&w. LIST PRICE: U.S. $15.00 LIST PRICE: CANADA $20 ISBN: 9781916041240 PUBLISHER: SPBH Editions AVAILABLE: 1/4/2022 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Active AVAILABILITY: In stock TERRITORY: NA ONLY
Instructional Photography Learning How to Live Now
Published by SPBH Editions. By Carmen Winant.
The acclaimed author of My Birth asks: can photographs help us live?
A timely and explosive book by acclaimed artist and writer Carmen Winant, Instructional Photography offers an investigation of a genre of photographs Winant calls “instructional.” It asks: can photographs teach, in and of themselves? Alternating between found images and shorter, text-based observations, Winant delves into this category of images through her own collection, understanding them as something beyond, or at least in between, documentary and fine art. Included in the volume are pictures of dog-training techniques, home gynecological exams and sitting Shiva, among many others. The book builds on a presentation that Winant delivered at the MoMA Contemporary Photo Forum in September 2020.
Carmen Winant (born 1983) is an artist and writer based in Columbus, Ohio, where she is the Roy Lichtenstein Endowed Chair of Studio Art at Ohio State University. Her recent artist’s books, My Birth and Notes on Fundamental Joy, were published by SPBH Editions, ITI Press and Printed Matter.
