This volume presents the project of the artists Neil Cummings and Marysia Lewandowska to explore the role and function of Tate and the Bank of England. It contains their photographs of backstage areas of the two institutions - archives, storage spaces, offices - which are juxtaposed with newspaper cuttings, cartoons and facsimiles of each institution's literature.

Capital

Arts & Photography

Cummings, Neil

Individual Artists

Tate

The Value of Things argues that society's priorities, its notions of value, are still informed by our relationship with physical objects, even though we have entered an age characterized by technological abstraction. The book examines how modern life is saturated with and defined by things, as the need to acquire, exchange and display objects is intensified by consumerism. Authors Neil Cummings and Marysia Lewandowska use a provocative mix of text and photography to describe the way in which two institutions, the department store and the museum, are central to the story of society's access to material things.

The Value of Things

Lewandowska, Marysia

Architecture

Birkhauser

The twentieth century was--among all else--a century of things. From the handmade object to the mass produced, these things that once served a purpose soon became harbingers of beauty, modernity and innovation. Beyond the material, these objects have stimulated fantasies that convey an image about a time and a place, so that now even an everyday telephone or radio that has long been discontinued can experience a rebirth as a cult object only to be purchased for lofty sums of money at an auction. The Ecstasy of Things illustrates how product photography reflects the world of things as captured in varying lights for designers, manufacturers and advertising agencies. Collected here are nearly 500 photographs--many of which were unearthed from company and agency archives worldwide on behalf of the Fotomuseum Winterthur and the Swiss Photography Foundation. This book most impressively demonstrates how the emotional and symbolic content of an object was represented through the changing tastes and aesthetics throughout the twentieth century. At the same time, the collection is a wealth of forms, a colorful compendium of design and a photographic history of the past century as illustrated through our possessions.

The Ecstasy Of Things: From Functional Object to Fetish in Twentieth Century Photography

Bolz, Norbert

Breuer, Gerda

Photography & Video

Steidl/Fotomuseum Winterthur/Museo Fotografia Contemporanea, Cinisello Balsamo

enthusiasm /anglais/allemand/espagnol

Actar

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Books by Cummings, Neil