Philosophy of photopgraphy

Henri Van Lierrsquos contribution to the field of photography is comparable in its scope as well as in its achievements to the work of all those we now consider... » 

Henri Van Lierrsquos contribution to the field of photography is comparable in its scope as well as in its achievements to the work of all those we now consider being the great modern classics Walter Benjamin Andr Bazin Andr Malraux John Berger Susan Sontag or Roland Barthes. Less well known probably for having worked and published in Belgium Henri Van Lier had written with Philosophy of Photography a profoundly original and innovative reflection on the medium both on its formal peculiarities and on its social cultural and anthropological functions.Much more than other theoreticians Van Lier succeeds in combining an astute sense of the detail with an extremely broad interest in the meaning of the medium for mankind for Van Lier photography is always analyzed in the light of a new discipline he coined as lsquoanthropogenyrsquo and which studies the gradual emergence of what makes us human through the history of the species. Moreover having no particular institutional agenda to defend Henri Van Lier is able to gather a wide range of disciplinary insights and questions ndashsemiotics history aesthetics and why not also philosophy. The present translation is the very first to appear in English yet it is also much more. The book has received a completely new set of illustrations meant to be more than merely lsquoillustrativersquo. Made by sixteen young photographers all trained by the Belgian photographer Geert Goiris who devoted an open master class to Henri Van Lierrsquos work all these images represent both an homage to the author of Philosophy of Photography and a timely exemplification of the usevalue of the ideas defended in the book. Each of the photographers has indeed attempted to suggest in his or her own images the echoes which specific points of Van Lierrsquos work are able to create in the mind the eyes but also the hands of contemporary readers and viewers. In this sense this book is not just a scholarly work it has become a work of art. «