The Critical Eye: Fifteen Pictures to Understand Photography

The Critical Eye provides a comprehensive approach to the critical understanding of photography through an in-depth discussion of fifteen photographs and their contexts—historical, generic, biographical, and aesthetic. Lyle Rexer argues that by concentrating on just a few carefully chosen works it is possible to understand the history, development, and contemporary situation of photography. Looking at images by photographers such as Roland Fischer, Myoung Ho Lee, Zanele Muholi, and Ernest Cole, The Critical Eye addresses a wide range of issues involved in photography, from authorial self-consciousness to the role of the audience, and with every chapter it seeks to link the history of photography to current practice.

Ellen Carey's monumental grey negatives in Polaroid 20 X 24 as a site-specific installation as "Mourning Wall" is the opening photo=based image for the chapter as "Abstraction in Photography: Picture Nothing".

Lyle Rexer is a writer, curator, critic and columnist, as well as a course leader at the School of Visual Arts. As well as being the author of numerous books on photography, he has also contributed to The New York Times, The New Yorker, Damn Magazine and Photograph Magazine. Lyle is the recipient of various prestigious awards, including the international Rhodes Scholar award.