New perspectives on humor within photography
Despite the ubiquitous presence of photographic humor in art and popular media, the phenomenon has as yet received very little scholarly attention. Focusing on staged humor rather than on comic effects of snapshot photography, this volume brings together leading scholars in the field addressing humor performed in front of the camera, often specifically created for the camera, and the performative joke-work done by the medium itself. A first section explores how photography, due to its "shattering" qualities, turns into a privileged medium for eliciting humorous effects and how humor can be discerned within the photographic event. A second section discusses the toolbox of photographic trickery (photomontage, double exposure and cinematic movement) that allows photography to mock itself. The book closes with a section on photographic wit in conceptual art, both in canonized and more locally distinct practices.

With artists' pages from Paulien Oltheten, Lieven Segers and David Helbich

This publication is GPRC-labeled (Guaranteed Peer-Reviewed Content).

Contributors: Kevin Atherton (National College of Art and Design, Dublin), Anna Corrigan and Susana S. Martins (Universidade NOVA de Lisboa), Hilde D'haeyere (KASK School of Arts of University College Ghent), Heather Diack (University of Miami), Louis Kaplan (University of Toronto), Ann Kristin Krahn (Braunschweig University of the Arts), Sandra Krizic Roban (Institute of Art History, Zagreb), Esther Leslie (Birkbeck University of London), Johan Pas (Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Antwerp), Katarzyna Ruchel-Stockmans (Vrije Universiteit Brussel)

About the Author
Liesbeth Decan is a lecturer and researcher at LUCA School of Arts-Campus Sint-Lukas Brussels and the Lieven Gevaert Research Centre for Photography, Art and Visual Culture. Mieke Bleyen is Researcher at the Lieven Gevaert Research Centre for Photography and the Institute of Cultural Studies at KU Leuven.

Reviews

The book is well designed, with black-and-white illustrations in every chapter. The essays are bookended by colourful (and humorous) 'artist's pages' by Paulien Oltheten, Lieven Segers and David Helbich, demonstrating the editors' stated commitment to giving the book 'both a theoretical and practice-based component'(p.22). Stills from Oltheten's La Defense, The Venturing Gaze, which open the book (Fig.9), exemplify the implicit self-reflexivity of much photographic practice. Oltheten includes subtitles of humorous comments made by the people photographed, making subjects of the camera and the photographer themselves. Bleyen's and Decan's book will be useful to scholars and those with an interest in photography and humour theory, as well as individuals interested more generally in the affective turn in art criticism.
Seth Graham, The Burlington Magazine | 162 | March 2020

En examinant l'humour en photographie, ce volume propose un parcours dans l'histoire du
medium et offre l'occasion aux lecteurs de multiples potentialites de decouvrir, ou redecouvrir,
des corpus souvent negliges. L'interet de cette reflexion collective reside finalement plus dans la
revalorisation de ces objets photographiques, culturels et artistiques consideres comme anecdotiques que dans une veritable conceptualisation de ce que serait un humour performatif.
Valerie Morisson, Focales n Degrees 4 : Photographies mises en espaces, mis a jour le 19/05/2020, URL : https://focales.univ-st-etienne.fr/index.php?id=2792

Book Information
ISBN 9789462701656
Author Liesbeth Decan
Format Paperback
Page Count 216
Imprint Leuven University Press
Publisher Leuven University Press
Weight(grams) 645g
Dimensions(mm) 230mm * 170mm * 14mm