How Photography Became Contemporary Art

A leading critics inside story of the photo boom during the crucial decades of the 1970s and 80s Grundberg . . . is a vibrant, opinionated, authoritative guide to the mediums past and present.Jackie Wullschlger, Financial Times, "Best Books of 2021: Visual Arts" When Andy Grundberg landed in New York in the early 1970s as a budding writer, photography was at the margins of the contemporary art world. By 1991, when he left his post as critic for the New York Times, photography was at the vital center of artistic debate. Grundberg writes eloquently and authoritatively about photographys boom years, chronicling the mediums increasing role within the most important art movements of the time, from Earth Art and Conceptual Art to performance and video. He also traces photographys embrace by museums and galleries, as well as its politicization in the culture wars of the 1980s and 90s. Grundberg reflects on the landmark exhibitions that defined the moment and his encounters with the work of leading photographersmany of whom he knew personallyincluding Gordon Matta-Clark, Cindy Sherman, and Robert Mapplethorpe. He navigates crucial themes such as photographys relationship to theory as well as feminism and artists of color. Part memoir and part history, this perspective by one of the periods leading critics ultimately tells a larger story about the crucial decades of the 1970s and 80s through the medium of photography.