Introduction: Photography between Art History and Philosophy

The essays collected in this special issue of Critical Inquiry are devoted \nto reflection on the shifts in photographically based art practice, exhibition, \nand reception in recent years and to the changes brought about by \nthese shifts in our understanding of photographic art. Although initiated \nin the 1960s, photography as a mainstream artistic practice has accelerated \nover the last two decades. No longer confined to specialist galleries, books, \njournals, and other distribution networks, contemporary art photographers \nare now regularly the subject of major retrospectives in mainstream \nfine-art museums on the same terms as any other artist. One could cite, for \nexample, Thomas Struth at the Metropolitan Museum in New York \n(2003), Thomas Demand at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMa) (2005), \nor Jeff Wall at Tate Modern and MoMA (2006–7). Indeed, Wall’s most \nrecent museum show, at the time of writing, The Crooked Path at Bozar, \nBrussels (2011), situated his photography in relation to the work of a range \nof contemporary photographers, painters, sculptors, performance artists, \nand filmmakers with whose work Wall considers his own to be in dialogue, irrespective of differences of media. All this goes to show that photographic \nart is no longer regarded as a subgenre apart. The situation in the \nUnited Kingdom is perhaps emblematic of both photography’s increasing \nprominence and its increased centrality in the contemporary art world \nover recent years. Tate hosted its first ever photography survey, Cruel and \nTender, as recently as 2003, and since then photography surveys have become \na regular biannual staple of its exhibition programming, culminating \nin the appointment of Tate’s first dedicated curator of photography in \n2010. A major shift in the perception of photography as art is clearly well \nunder way.