Photography Changes Everything

by Merry A. Foresta (Foreword), Marvin Heiferman (Editor)

Photography Changes Everything offers a provocative rethinking of photography's impact on our culture and our daily lives. Compiling hundreds of images and responses from leading authorities on photography, it offers a brilliant, reader-friendly exploration of the many ways in which photographs package information and values, demand and hold attention, and shape our knowledge of and experience in the world. The volume draws on the extraordinary visual assets of the Smithsonian Institution's museums, science centers and archives to launch an unprecedented interdisciplinary dialogue on photography's capacity to shape and change our experience of the world. Photography Changes Everything features over 300 images and nearly 100 engaging short texts commissioned from experts, writers, inventors, public figures and others—from Hugh Hefner to John Baldessari, John Waters, Robert Adams, Sandra Phillips and many others. Each story responds to images selected by project contributors. Together they engage readers in a timely exploration of the extent to which our lives have been transformed through our interactions with photographic imagery. Edited by leading photography curator and author Marvin Heiferman, Photography Changes Everything provides a unique opportunity to better understand the history, practice and power of photography at this transitional moment in visual culture.

Genres: Photography, Art, Nonfiction, Design, History, Essays, Theory

263 pages, Paperback

First published June 30, 2012

About the author

Merry A. Foresta is an independent curator and arts writer.

Reviews

[Jay · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wish this book had been around when I was in school, it would have been a great one for theory discussion! Lots of brief essays about the multitude of ways that photography impacts our lives, divided into subcategories for easy reference, and including the images that each essay discusses.

[ChrisM · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent resource to inspire and inform one's own photographic/visual work or to help direct further research on the topics presented by the various artists, scientists, and teachers. Each essay is short but sweet with visual examples.

[Mathew Duman · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a collection of short essays, each describing the effect of photography on our perception of the world. They add up to an eye-opening account of the impact of photography on society. Will change the way you look at photography and its effect on the world.

[ellie ☆ · Rating 3 out of 5]

this is essentially an essay collection by a myriad of people and experts on several topics about the transformative power of photography, so it's a bit hard to review as a whole. some felt a bit redundant in theme, especially towards the end. i do also feel like some essays don't quite stand the test of time especially with the rise of generative ai. photography is still incredibly powerful, but what you see is no longer what you can believe.

[Michele · Rating 4 out of 5]

Every photographer, both amateur and professional, should read this book. It'll make you think about the huge power of your medium and the way to enjoy it even more.
Also great as a help for new photo projects.

[Kathryn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Makes you think about how much the medium really is the message.

[Jerrie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book surprised and then surprised again and again. It is a series of essays so it can be a bit uneven, but when it hits, it hits hard. Worthwhile. Really!

[Prima Seadiva · Rating 3 out of 5]

Library book.
A series of short essays and interviews about various ways that the arts, sciences and everyday world have been impacted by photography especially its exponential spread in the last 20 years.
The range of authors was quite wide. Some were known to me, many not.

I found the texts varied widely in their readability but since all were short, I made it through the ones dull to me. Others provoked more thought. A few were worth a second read.

While I believe photography and its ubiquity have changed much there were a few essays where I had little interest in the subject and some where I did not necessarily agree with the change as described. Some ideas of photography's impact seemed very obvious to me.
I'm not going to detail more. Read and see how you connect. It's worth the time.

For a book about the impact of a visual medium, the accompanying reproductions were not great.
I would have liked them to be larger, of better quality and have more of them. Also the captions were painfully tiny in a type size I could not read without a magnifying glass. For me these flaws made it a 3 not 4 star read.

[Rene Schlegel · Rating 4 out of 5]

This well edited selection surprises. One would expect lengthy explanations about art and photography. Yet non of this. The practical and the artsy, the documentary, the historical and the mundane. How photography changed much in our life, in science, in discovery in learning is very well covered here and has many corners and twists that surprises even "the well informed". The only criticism I'd have is the stale print quality of the photos and, much more, that the texts mention prominently some photos but then they are now shown. But these are minor downsides of a great collection that is also a very easy and entertaining read apart from being highly informative.
I was most impressed by #Jeremy Wolfe's convincing essay of how powerful our photographic memory is and I really loved the text of the youngest contributor, Tien Nguyen, for its blunt and beautiful honesty and introspective

[Drew · Rating 3 out of 5]

I very much enjoyed some of the chapters about change through activism, but was left wanting more from the book. It is difficult to articulate the profound ways in which photography works, and I was hoping for it to be covered more comprehensively.

Full review on the blog

[s2artM · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great resource to expand your ideas on how and why photography functions in the 21st century, it dips into a long and rich history of the medium and its uses. A must for serious beginners in photography.

[Suzanne Révy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some of the earlier essays were less interesting to me, partly because the ideas in them struck me as obvious. Later essays on the snapshot, family history and memory were very interesting.

[Mills College Library]

770.1 P5757 2012

[Carolgene · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book stays by my desk for reference.