Text engl. - Contents: 1. The Particular and the Universal; 2. Creation and Discovery; 3. Reflected Light and Revelation, Beneath-the-Surface; 4. Truth and Ambiguity; 5. The Fleeting Moment and the Artifact; 6. Walker Evans and the Paradoxes of Modernist Aesthetics; Summary and Conclusion; Bibliography; Index. - „This study takes the theories of postmodernists such as Allan Sekula and John Tagg one step further by using their criticisms depicting modernism as contradictory as a starting point to generate a definition of modernism and formalism as a system of paradoxes. The book presents a history of modernism in America as a means of describing the evolution and multiplication of these paradoxes through the 1970s, and shows that the museum and gallery systems still rely on these aesthetics to perpetuate themselves as the authority on photography. The theory provided by this study collates and organizes chronologically the vast array of modernist and formalist writings throughout the 20th century.“ (Publisher’s text). - Nur Kurztitelaufnahme 01.2011.