The essays collected in this special issue of Critical Inquiry are devoted
to reflection on the shifts in photographically based art practice, exhibition,
and reception in recent years and to the changes brought about by
these shifts in our understanding of photographic art. Although initiated
in the 1960s, photography as a mainstream artistic practice has accelerated
over the last two decades. No longer confined to specialist galleries, books,
journals, and other distribution networks, contemporary art photographers
are now regularly the subject of major retrospectives in mainstream
fine-art museums on the same terms as any other artist. One could cite, for
example, Thomas Struth at the Metropolitan Museum in New York
(2003), Thomas Demand at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMa) (2005),
or Jeff Wall at Tate Modern and MoMA (2006–7). Indeed, Wall’s most
recent museum show, at the time of writing, The Crooked Path at Bozar,
Brussels (2011), situated his photography in relation to the work of a range
of contemporary photographers, painters, sculptors, performance artists,
and filmmakers with whose work Wall considers his own to be in dialogue, irrespective of differences of media. All this goes to show that photographic
art is no longer regarded as a subgenre apart. The situation in the
United Kingdom is perhaps emblematic of both photography’s increasing
prominence and its increased centrality in the contemporary art world
over recent years. Tate hosted its first ever photography survey, Cruel and
Tender, as recently as 2003, and since then photography surveys have become
a regular biannual staple of its exhibition programming, culminating
in the appointment of Tate’s first dedicated curator of photography in
2010. A major shift in the perception of photography as art is clearly well
under way
