Why It Does Not Have To Be In Focus: Modern Photography Explained

Why take a self-portrait but obscure your face with a lightbulb?

Or deliberately underexpose an image?

And why photograph a ceiling?

In Why It Does Not Have To Be In Focus , Jackie Higgins offers a lively, informed defence of modern photography.

Choosing 100 key photographs with particular emphasis on the last twenty years she examines what inspired each photographer in the first place, and traces how the piece was executed.

In doing so, she brings to light the layers of meaning and artifice behind these singular works, some of which were initially dismissed out of hand for being blurred, overexposed or badly composed.

The often controversial works discussed in this book play with our expectations of a photograph, our ingrained tendency to believe that it is telling us the unadorned truth.

Jackie Higginss book proves once and for all that theres much more to the art of photography than just pointing and clicking.