Four Arts of Photography: An Essay in Philosophy

Four Arts of Photography explores the history of photography through the lens of philosophy and proposes a new scholarly understanding of the art form for the 21^st century.

• Re-examines the history of art photography through four major photographic movements and with case studies of representative images
• Employs a top-down, theory to case approach, as well as a bottom-up, case to theory approach
• Advances a new theory regarding the nature of photography that is grounded in technology but doesn't place it in opposition to painting
• Includes commentaries by two leading philosophers of photography, Diarmuid Costello and Cynthia A. Freeland

Dominic McIver Lopes is Distinguished University Scholar and Professor of Philosophy at the University of British Columbia, Canada. He is the author of Understanding Pictures (1996) and Sight and Sensibility: Evaluating Pictures (2005), as well as books on computer art and the nature of art. His first camera was a Kodak Instamatic 124, which he used to document his family’s migration from Scotland to Canada.