Photography has been around for nearly two centuries, but we are no closer to understanding what it is. For some people, a photograph is an optically accurate impression of the world, for others, it is mainly a way of remembering people and places. Some view it as a sign of bourgeois life, a kind of addiction of the middle class, whilst others see it as a troublesome interloper that has confused people s ideas of reality and fine art to the point that they have difficulty even defining what a photograph is. For some, the whole question of finding photography s nature is itself misguided from the beginning.

This provocative second volume in the Routledge The Art Seminar series presents not one but many answers to the question what makes a photograph a photograph?