Finalist: Raymond Klibansky Book Prize Humanities and Social Sciences Federation of Canada (2008) Making a connection between photography and memory is almost automatic. Should it be? In Scissors, Paper, Stone Martha Langford explores the nature of memory and art. She challenges the conventional emphasis on the camera as a tool of perception by arguing that photographic works are products of the mind - picturing memory is, first and foremost, the expression of a mental process. Langford organizes the book around the conceit of the child's game scissors, paper, stone, using it to ground her discussion of the tensions between remembering and forgetting, the intersection of memory and imagination, and the relationship between memory and history. Scissors, Paper, Stone explores the great variety of photographic art produced by Canadian artists as expressions of memory. Their work, including images by Carl Beam, Carole Conde and Karl Beveridge, Donigan Cumming, Stan Denniston, Robert Houle, Robert Minden, Michael Snow, Diana Thorneycroft, Jeff Wall, and Jin-me Yoon, is presented as part of a rich interdisciplinary study of contemporary photography and how it has shaped modern memory.

Is photography an art of memory?

About the Author
Martha Langford is the author of Suspended Conversations: The Afterlife of Memory in Photographic Albums and the editor of Image & Imagination.

Reviews
"Langford advances an uncommonly rich conception of memory, and Scissors, Paper, Stone is an important contribution to the growing scholarship on Canadian photographic art." TOPIA



Book Information
ISBN 9780773540781
Author Martha Langford
Format Paperback
Page Count 352
Imprint McGill-Queen's University Press
Publisher McGill-Queen's University Press