8vo. pp. xx, 331. colour & b/w illustrations. index. quarter cloth hardcover. Cambridge: The MIT Press, [2009].
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As Hollis Frampton's photographs and celebrated experimental films were
testing the boundaries of "the camera arts" in the 1960s and 1970s, his
provocative and highly literate writings were attempting to establish an
intellectually resonant form of discourse for these critically underexplored fields.
It was a time when artists working in diverse disciplines were beginning to pick up
cameras and produce films and videotapes, well before these practices were
understood or embraced by institutions of contemporary art. This collection of
Frampton's writings presents his critical essays (many written for
Artforum and October) along with additional
material, including lectures, correspondence, interviews, and production notes and
scripts. It replaces -- and supersedes -- the long-unavailable Circles of
Confusion, published in 1983. Frampton ranged widely over the visual arts
in his writing, and the texts in this collection display his unique approaches to
photography, film, and video, as well as the plastic and literary arts. They include
critically acclaimed essays on Edward Weston and Eadweard Muybridge as well as
appraisals of contemporary photographers; the influential essay, "For a
Metahistory of Film," along with scripts, textual material, and scores for his
films; writings on video that constitute a prehistory of the digital arts; a
dialogue with Carl Andre (his friend and former Phillips Andover classmate) from the
early 1960s; and two inventive, almost unclassifiable pieces that are reminiscent of
Borges, Joyce, and Beckett.
