Text engl. - Each of the eight chapters in this book takes a timeframe of between 15 and nearly 40 years in which to examine the medium through the lenses of art, science, social science, travel, war, fashion, the mass media, and individual practitioners. These broad topics work alongside a fully developed cultural context in which the emphasis is more on key ideas than individuals. There are debates such as the nature of invention, the effect of mass media on morality, the use of imagery as a tool of Western colonialism, and the role of the photograph in advertising, radical politics, and family life. Focus boxes highlight interesting cultural or controversial issues, for example Photography and Futurism and Lewis Carroll's Photographs of Children. The author also pays close attention to how contemporary practitioners, commentators, and beholders have talked about specific works, the nature of photography, and the photographer's changing role in society. States, the book benefits from two decades of research into non-Western photography and yields rarely seen work from Latin America, Africa, India, Russia, China, and Japan. Great names from the world over are well represented [...]. Additionally, featured in more detail: arts, music and photography, equipment, techniques and reference, history, humanities, etc. (www.eurobuch.com/buch/isbn/0130198560.html; seen 02.2018).