Overview

Decoys and Disruptions: Selected Essays, 1975-2001 is the first comprehensive collection of writings by American artist and critic Martha Rosler. Best known for her videos and photography, Rosler has also been an original and influential cultural critic and theorist for over twenty-five years. The writings collected here address such key topics as documentary photography, feminist art, video, government patronage of the arts, censorship and the future of digitally based photographic media. Taken together, these thirteen essays not only show Martha Rosler's importance as a critic but also offer an essential resource for readers interested in the issues confronting contemporary art. The essays in this collection illustrate Rosler's ongoing investigation into the means of exposing truth and provoking change, providing a retrospective of characteristic themes in her work. Mixing analysis and wit, Rosler challenges many of the fundamental precepts of contemporary art practice. Her influential essay ""In, Around, and Afterthoughts: On Documentary Photography"" almost single-handedly dismantled the myth of liberal documentary photography when it appeared. Many of the essays in this volume have had a similarly wide-ranging influence; others are published here for the first time. Illustrating the essays are 64 images by Rosler and other artists.

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9780262182317

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Reviews

Martha Rosler's practice demonstrates that feminism is not a politics of the few but a politics of the many, and that gender inequality is neither distinct from racial and class injustice nor separable from the politics of representation and power relations of the artistic field. Decoys and Disruptions constitutes a theory of activist art at its fiercest, most complex, and most urgent. --Linda Nochlin, Lila Acheson Wallace Professor of Modern Art, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University Martha Rosler, one of the most important critical thinkers and artists of the present, becomes available in this collection of vitally important essays. Her work constitutes a major oeuvre in the analysis of the processes of power in our society--processes so embedded in the practices of daily life that we no longer see or know them. Her trenchant and lucid analyses of the relations between life worlds and art worlds are ever more timely in their historical depth and contemporary relevance. --Griselda Pollock, University of Leeds For many years, and almost single-handedly, Martha Rosler has provided a solid theoretical basis for critical studies in photography and video. This collection of her lucid essays is a useful compilation of her most important theoretical work. Seeing the essays (and a fascinating collection of photographs) together in this book, one is struck by the depth of her work: a unique blend of insight as critical clarity and art as idea. --DeeDee Halleck, independent film maker and Professor Emeritus of Communications, University of California, San Diego

Author Information

Martha Rosler lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. She has taught and lectured on photography since the mid-1970s. Her work wasthe subject of a major retrospective, ""Martha Rosler: Positions in the Life World,"" in 2000. She is the author of 14 books and numerous essays.

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