Hide and seek : camouflage, photography, and the media of reconnaissance
Publication details: New York : Zone Books, 2012.Description: 239 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some color), map ; 24 cmISBN:- 9781935408222
- 1935408224
- TR148 .S54 2012
Item type | Current library | Collection | Call number | Status | Date due | Barcode | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Book | Whitecliffe Library General Shelves | General | TR148 SHE (Browse shelf(Opens below)) | Available | 0014028 |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
I. Productive mimesis and the art of disappearance: instantaneous photography and Abbott Thayer's modeling of invisibility in nature and man -- II. Mending the net: Camouflage, serial photography, and the suture of self-effacement and reconnaissance -- III. How not to be seen: dynamic camouflage and the motion films of Len Lye -- IV. Subject to change: skin as screen.
Camouflage is an adaptive logic of escape from photographic representation. In this book, Hanna Rose Shell traces the evolution of camouflage as it developed in counterpoint to technological advances in photography, innovations in warfare, and as-yet-unsolved mysteries of natural history. In this book camouflage reveals itself to be a set of institutional structures, mixed-media art practices, and permutations of subjectivity, that emerged over the course of the twentieth century in environments increasingly mediated by photographic and cinematic intervention. Through a series of fascinating case studies, Shell uncovers three conceptually linked species of photographic camouflage--the static, the serial, and the dynamic--and shows how each not only reflects the type of photographic reconnaissance it was meant to counter.