Susie Linfield: The Cruel Radiance: Photography and Political Violence (2010)

“In The Cruel Radiance, Susie Linfield challenges the idea that photographs of political violence exploit their subjects and pander to the voyeuristic tendencies of their viewers. Instead she argues passionately that looking at such images—and learning to see the people in them—is an ethically and politically necessary act that connects us to our modern history of violence and probes the human capacity for cruelty. Grappling with critics from Walter Benjamin and Bertolt Brecht to Susan Sontag and the postmoderns—and analyzing photographs from such events as the Holocaust, China’s Cultural Revolution, and recent terrorist acts—Linfield explores the complex connection between photojournalism and the rise of human rights ideals. In the book’s concluding section, she examines the indispensable work of Robert Capa, James Nachtwey, and Gilles Peress and asks how photography should respond to the increasingly nihilistic trajectory of modern warfare.”

Publisher University of Chicago Press, 2010
ISBN 0226482529, 9780226482521
344 pages

review (Frances Richard, The Nation)
review (Sean O’Hagan, The Guardian)

Publisher
Google books

PDF, PDF (updated on 2014-12-7)

J.D.B. Stillman: The Horse in Motion (1882)

The book by J.D.B. Stillman, commissioned by Muybridge’s patron, the railroad baron Leland Stanford, was based on Muybridge’s now famous photographic studies of a horse galloping. But master and reluctant servant had fallen out, and the book was published under Stillman’s name, giving Muybridge negligible credit. The book contains detailed description of the studies into the motion of the horse (and other quadrupeds), with five of Muybridge’s photographs and ninety-one lithographs based on his photographs, plus line drawings. The book’s publication caused considerable embarrassment to Muybridge at the time, as his contribution to the scientific studies was now questioned by several authorities, but it is an important publication nonetheless.

The horse in motion as shown by instantaneous photography, with a study on animal mechanics founded on anatomy and the revelations of the camera, in which is demonstrated the theory of quadrupedal locomotion
Publisher J. R. Osgood, Boston, 1882
127 pages

View online (at Internet Archive)

Eadweard Muybridge: The Human Figure in Motion (1901–)

The Human Figure in Motion. An Electro-Photographic Investigation of Consecutive Phases of Muscular Actions
First published in Philadelphia, 1901
Third impression
Publisher Chapman & Hall, London, 1907
277 pages

PDF (no OCR, updated on 2015-1-21)
Introduction (HTML)