Alex Klein, Charlotte Cotton (eds.): Words Without Pictures (2009)

“Words Without Pictures was conceived of by curator Charlotte Cotton and artist Alex Klein to create spaces for discourse around current issues in photography. Every month for a year, beginning in November 2007, an artist, educator, critic, art historian, or curator was invited to contribute a short, un-illustrated, opinionated essay about an emerging or changing aspect of photography. Each piece was available on the Words Without Pictures website for one month and was accompanied by a discussion forum, which received both invited and unsolicited responses from a wide range of interested parties—students, bloggers, critics, historians, artists of all kinds, all of which were previously issued as a print-on-demand title.

Contributors include Walead Beshty, Paul Graham, Darius Himes, Kevin Moore, Penelope Umbrico, James Welling, George Baker, Sharon Lockhart, Shannon Ebner, Allen Ruppersberg, Allan McCollum, Carter Mull, Anthony Pearson, Mark Wyse, Sarah Charlesworth, Sze Tsung Leong, Harrell Fletcher, Leslie Hewitt, A.L. Steiner, Jason Evans, Charlie White, John Divola, and many more.”

Publisher Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, 2009
ISBN 0875872034, 9780875872032
500 pages

WorldCat

PDF

Konstantin Akinsha: The Second Life of Soviet Photomontage, 1935-1980s (2012)

“This dissertation explores the development of Soviet photomontage from the second half of the 1930s to the end of the 1970s. Until now, the transformation of the modernist medium and its incorporation into the everyday practice of Soviet visual propaganda during and after the Second World War has not attracted much scholarly attention. The firm association of photomontage with the Russian avant-garde in general, and with Constructivism in particular, has led art historians to disregard the fact that the medium was practised in the USSR until the final days of the Soviet system. The conservative government organisations in control of propaganda preserved satirical photomontage in its post-Dadaist phase and Heartfield-like form, finding it useful in the production of negative propaganda.”

Doctor of Philosophy Dissertation
University of Edinburgh, 2012
328 pages + 368 pages of illustrations

Publisher
Author

PDF (29 MB)

Anne Hollander: Seeing Through Clothes (1978)

“Seeing Through Clothes is a vivid pictorial history of the changing images of ourselves in fashion. From classical Greek sculpture through the photographs of Avedon, Anne Hollander shows us how art has determined, rather than reflected, our concept of beauty and fashion. She examines the evolution of underclothes, hair as a sexual symbol, the difference between ‘naked’ and ‘nude,’ the role of black clothing, the meaning of mirror images, and how our concept of the perfect figure changes, and thus has altered fashion through the ages.” (from the back cover)

Publisher Avon Books, New York, 1978
ISBN 0380487772
504 pages

Review (Kirkus Reviews, n.d.)
Commentary (Dan Piepenbring, The Paris Review, 2014)
Commentary (Valerie Steele, Artforum, 2014)

WorldCat

PDF (86 MB, no OCR)
PDF (38 MB, OCR’d version via Marcell Mars added on 2014-11-30)