Photography is one of the principal filters through which we engage the world. The contributors to this volume focus on Walter Benjamin's concept of the optical

The Optical Unconscious is a pointed protest against the official story of modernism and against the critical tradition that attempted to define modern art acco

The advent of photography revolutionized perception, making visible what was once impossible to see with the human eye. In At the Edge of Sight, Shawn Michelle

In Photographic Returns Shawn Michelle Smith traces how historical moments of racial crisis come to be known photographically and how the past continues to inha

"Examining the themes of presence and absence, the relationship between photography and theatre, history and death, these 'reflections on photography' begin as