ABSTRACT
The perennial question ‘Is photography art?’ may seem to have been answered for good by the early 21st century. In Britain, for example, major retrospective exhibitions of photography appeared for the first time at the art galleries Tate Modern (Cruel and Tender, 2003, Street and Studio, 2008) and Tate Britain (How We Are, 2007) and in 2005, after more than 180 years, London’s National Gallery staged its first show by a photographer (see Chevalier and Wiggins 2005; Dexter and Weski 2003; Eskildsen 2008; Williams and Bright 2007). The photobook was fully acknowledged as a form of art practice (Parr and Badger 2004, 2006) and an abundance of overviews bringing together examples of photography as contemporary art were published (for example Bright 2005; Carver 2002; Cotton 2004; Demos 2006).
