The darkroom : photography and the theatre of desire

Melbourne : Macmillan, 2003. Octavo, boards in dustjacket, pp. 287, 30 unnumbered leaves of plates, a fine copy, as new.

Anne Marsh’s treatise on the art of photography traces its theoretical underpinning from the early debates between the rationalists and the fantasists, through psychoanalytical interpretations, to the theatre of desire. She investigates the role of photography in ghostly performances’, the masking of desire’ and high camp aesthetics’ – through to performance art’ and the role of the photographer as a gender terrorist’ – as in the work of Del LaGrace Volcano. The study concludes with notable examples of postmodern photography as they have occurred in the Australian context. This ground-breaking work by a leading Monash University academic will interest all students of photography and followers of recent trends in art and art theory.

Includes reproductions of works by Leah King-Smith, Gordon Bennett, Tracey Moffatt, Linda Sproul, Pat Brassington, Jill Orr, Mike Parr, Polixeni Papapetrou, Joel Peter Witkin, Man Ray, Hans Bellmer, Julia Margaret Cameron, J. W. Lindt et al.