“Visual Literacy: A Critical Library” is a selection of books, curated by Rica Cerbarano, that comprises works that have marked the history of photographic criticism and contemporary publications that have examined the current role of images. Its aim is to provide a comprehensive bibliography to approach the language of photography with consciousness and critical sense.
Each of these books should represent a milestone for artists, curators, editors, and any person working with images, but our aim is that they reach everyone, as we strongly believe that visual literacy can enable individuals to consciously participate in contemporary culture and society.
The books featured in the list are:
- After Photography, by Fred Ritchin (W.W. Norton & Company, 2010), first edition 2008
- Allan Sekuka, Art Isn’t Fair. Further Essays on the Traffic in Photographs and Related Media edited by Sally Stein, Ina Steiner (MACK, 2020)
- Bending the Frame: Photojournalism, Documentary, and the Citizen by Fred Ritchin (Aperture, 2013)
- Between The Eyes by David Levi Strauss (Aperture, 2012)
- Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography by Roland Barthes (Penguin Random House UK, 2020), first edition: 1980
- Camera Orientalis – Reflections on Photography of the Middle East by Ali Behdad (University of Chicago Press, 2016)
- Civil Imagination: A Political Ontology of Photography by Ariella Azoulay (Verso Books, 2015)
- Close up at a Distance by Laura Kurgan (Zone Books, 2013)
- Co-Illusion: Dispatches from the End of Communication by David Levi Strauss (MIT Press, 2020)
- Words Not Spent Today Buy Smaller Images Tomorrow: Essays on the Present and Future of Photography by David Levi Strauss (Aperture, 2014)
- Decolonising the Camera by Mark Sealy (Lawrence & Wishart, 2019)
- Decoys and Disruptions – Selected Writings, 1975–2001 by Martha Rosler (MIT Press, 2006)
- How to See the World – An Introduction to Images, from Self-Portraits to Selfies, Maps to Movies, and More by Nicholas Mirzoeff (Basic Books, 2016)
- Image Text Music by Catherine Taylor (SPBH Editions, 2022)
- Images in Spite of All: Four Photographs from Auschwitz by Georges Didi-Hubermann (University of Chicago Press, 2008)
- In Our Own Image: The Coming Revolution in Photography by Fred Ritchin (Aperture, 2010)
- Indeterminacy: Thoughts on Time, the Image, and Race(ism) by David Campany & Stanley Wolukau-Wanambwa (MACK, 2022)
- Alfredo Jaar: Lament of the Images (MIT List Visual Arts Center, 1999)
- The Medium is the Massage by Marshall McLuhan & Quentin Fiore (Gingko Press), first edition: 1967
- On Photography by Susan Sontag (Penguin Random House UK, 2008) first edition: 1977
- Photography Against the Grain: Essays and Photo Works, 1973–1983 by Allan Sekula (MACK, 2016), first edition: 1984
- Photography and Belief by David Levi Strauss (David Zwirner Books, 2020)
- Photography and Collaboration: From Conceptual Art to Crowdsourcing by Daniel Palmer (Routledge, 2017)
- Photography Changes Everything by Marvin Heiferman (Aperture, 2012)
- Photography: A Critical Introduction edited by Liz Wells (Routledge, 2022), first edition: 1996
- Photography: Race, Rights and Representation by Mark Sealy (Lawrence & Wishart, 2022)
- Regarding the Pain of Others by Susan Sontag (Penguin Random House UK, 2019), first edition: 2003
- The Camera: Essence and Apparatus by Victor Burgin (MACK, 2018)
- The Civil Contract of Photography by Ariella Azoulay (Zone Books, 2008)
- The Cruel Radiance: Photography and Political Violence by Susie Linfield (University of Chicago Press, 2010)
- The Culture of Photography in Public Space edited by Anne Marsh, Melissa Miles and Daniel Palmer (Intellect Books, 2015)
- The Eye of History: When Images Take Positions by Georges Didi-Hubermann (MIT Press, 2018)
- The Image of Whiteness: Contemporary Photography and Racialization edited by Daniel C. Blight (SPBH Editions, 2019)
- The Lives of Images: Vol. 1: Repetition, Reproduction, and Circulation by Stanley Wolukau-Wanambwa (Aperture, 2021)
- The Ongoing Moment by Geoff Dyer (Canongate Books, 2012)
- The Peripheral Space of Photography by Murat Nemet-Nejat (Green Integer Books, 2000)
- The Right to Look: A Counterhistory of Visuality by Nicholas Mirzoeff (Duke University Press, 2011)
- The Social Photo: on Photography and Social Media by Nathan Jurgenson (Verso Books, 2019)
- To Be Determined: Photography and the Future by Duncan Wooldridge (SPBH Editions, 2021)
- Tough Enough: Arbus, Arendt, Didion, McCarthy, Sontag, Weil by Deborah Nelson (University of Chicago Press, 2017)
- Towards a Philosophy of Photography by Vilem Flusser (Reaktion Books, 2000), first edition: 1984
- Understanding a Photograph by John Berger (Penguin Random House UK, 2013)
- Ways of Seeing by John Berger (Penguin Random House UK, 2008), first edition: 1972
- We Were Here: Sexuality, Photography, and Cultural Difference by Sunil Gupta (Aperture, 2022)
- What Do Pictures Want? The Lives and Loves of Images by W. J. T. Mitchell (University of Chicago Press, 2004)
THE CURATOR SHIP 