A World History of Photography

Photography has affected the other visual arts to a profound degree. Now accepted for itself as a visual statement with its own aesthetic character, the photograph had an earlier role in replicating and popularizing artistic expression in other media, and thus had an incalculable effect on the taste of vast numbers of people in urbanized societies. Photography has made possible an international style in architecture and interior design. It has inspired new ways of organizing and representing experience in the graphic arts and sculpture. How and why the medium has attained the position it occupies in contemporary life are questions that this history explores.