ABSTRACT
In his Preface to Photography, A Very Short Introduction, historian Steve Edwards asks us to imagine a world without photography (Edwards 2006). His point, of course, is that it is almost impossible for us to do so; photography permeates all aspects of our life, acting as a principal source and repository of information about our world of experience. It follows that historical, theoretical and philosophical explorations of photographs as images and objects, and of photography as a range of types of practice operating in varying contexts, are necessarily wide-ranging. There is no single history of photography.
