How Photography Became Contemporary Art: Inside an Artistic Revolution from Pop to the Digital Age

New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2021. Cloth, ix, 286 pages, illustrations, portraits; 26 cm. Tight, clean copy. Dust jacket protected in a mylar cover. A fine copy of the first printing. "When Andy Grundberg landed in New York in the early 1970s as a writer, photography was at the margins of the contemporary art world. By 1991, when he left his post as critic for the New York Times, photography was at the center of artistic debate. Grundberg writes about photography's "boom years," chronicling the medium's increasing role within the most important art movements of the time, from Earth Art and Conceptual Art to performance and video. He also traces photography's embrace by museums and galleries, as well as its politicization in the culture wars of the 80s and 90s. Grundberg reflects on the exhibitions that defined the moment and his encounters with the work of photographers--many of whom he knew personally--including Gordon Matta-Clark, Cindy Sherman, and Robert Mapplethorpe. He navigates themes such as photography's relationship to theory as well as feminism and artists of color. Part memoir and part history, this perspective ultimately tells a larger story about the decades of the 70s and 80s through the medium of photography." - Publisher. Includes: Vito Acconci; Robert Adams; Ant Farm; Richard Avedon; John Baldessari; Lewis Baltz; Tina Barney; Thomas Barrow; Bernd and Hilla Becher; Dara Birnbaum; Troy Brauntuch; Ellen Brooks; Chris Burden; Nancy Burson; Peter Campus; Ellen Carey; James Casebere; Sarah Charlesworth; William Christenberry; Mark Cohen; Eileen Cowin; Robert Cumming; Jan Dibbets; John Divola; William Eggleston; Lee Friedlander; Adam Fuss; Ralph Gibson; Nan Goldin; Dan Graham; Jan Groover; Adreas Gursky; Hans Haacke; David Haxton; Robert Heinecken; Michael Heizer; Douglas Huebler; Peter Hujar; Joan Jonas; Kenneth Josephson; Martin Kippenberger; Barbara Kruger; William Larson; Louise Lawler; Sherrie Levine; David Levinthal; Sol LeWitt; Mary Lucier; Frank Majore; Mike Mandel; Robert Mapplethorpe; Mary Ellen Mark; Gordon Matta-Clark; Susan Meiselas; Ana Mendieta; Ray Metzker; Joel Meyerowitz; Duane Michals; Abelardo Morell; Vik Muniz; Bruce Nauman; Dennis Oppenheim; Nam June Paik; Irving Penn; John Pfahl; Adrian Piper; Richard Prince; Robert Rauschenberg; Gerhard Richter; David Robbins; Thomas Ruff; Edward Ruscha; Lucas Samaras; Carolee Schneemann; Andres Serrano; Sonia Landy Sheridan; Cindy Sherman; Stephen Shore; Laurie Simmons; Lorna Simpson; Sandy Skoglund; Robert Smithson; Mike and Doug Starn; Joel Sternfeld; Thomas Struth; Larry Sultan; Tseng Kwong Chi; Jerry Uelsmann; Bill Viola; Jeff Wall; Andy Warhol; Carrie Mae Weems; William Wegman; Susan Weil; Hannah Wilke; Neil Winokur; David Wojnarowicz; and Francesca Woodman.. 1st. Hardcover. Fine/Fine. 4to.