The Art of Interruption: Realism, Photography, and the Everyday

by John Roberts

Art of Interruption is the first major examination of the relationship between photography and art, and the philosophical and aesthetic categories of "realism" and the "everyday." Beginning with the massive reorientation of photographic practice during the Russian revolution and ending with contemporary debates on the body and digital technology, John Roberts presents the history of twentieth-century photography and art as an extensive interplay between "realism" and the "everyday." This book offers a history of how the uses and reception of photography has oriented itself to the world and the world of art. Roberts' claim, consequently, is to reinstate the long and troubled debate on realism in photography as fundamental to understanding the development and crises of art this century. He sets out to defend "realism" as a complex cultural and philosophical category.

241 pages, Paperback

First published July 15, 1998

About the author

John Roberts is a former Senior Research Fellow in Fine Art and now Professor of Art & Aethetics at the University of Wolverhampton. He is the author of The Art of Interruption: Realism, Photography and the Everyday (Manchester University Press, 1997) and The Philistine Controversy (Verso, with Dave Beech, 2002), plus other books and numerous articles, in Radical Philosophy and elsewhere.