Politics Unseen: Group F.64 Photography and the Problem of Purity (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780520399754)

In Politics Unseen, Ellen Macfarlane radically reframes the "pure photographs" of California art photography society Group f.64, known for depicting Western landscapes, fruits and vegetables, flowers, and faces. By foregrounding f.64 members' and their prints' alliances across commercial, political, and artistic domains, the book shatters entrenched understandings of the group as disinterested in contemporary events and unseats conceptions of its prints as icons of modernist purity. Instead, Politics Unseen argues the politics of f.64's photographs become visible when interwar ideas about "purity" in the areas of eugenics, racial essence, nutrition, colonialism, and horticulture are interrogated. Ultimately, Politics Unseen alters perceptions not only of f.64, but also of what constituted a political image in 1930s America.

Author: Ellen MacFarlane
ISBN-10: 0520399757
ISBN-13: 9780520399754
Publisher: University of California Press
Language: English
Published: 01/07/2025
Pages: 280
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.95lbs
Size: 10.20h x 7.10w x 0.80d