Degrees of Guidance: Essays on Twentieth-Century American Photography

This selection of essays and reviews written between 1962 and 1983 focus on the creativity of the American photographer as artist and on the nature of his work and life, placing special attention on the creative impulse of the art photographer and the significance of his pictures as expressive works of art. Among the major artist photographers examined are Alfred Stieglitz, Walker Evans, Diane Arbus, Harry Callahan, Emmet Gowin, and Jerry Uelsmann. Topics discussed include the collecting of photographs, the nature of pictorial vision in photography, photographic portraiture, and manipulative photography. Degrees of Guidance differs from other anthologies in that it focuses on individual photographers rather than on the more social or ontological aspects of photography.