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20Introduction to Perspectives on the Arts and TechnologyJournal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 55 (2): 95-106. 1997.
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2Scales of Space and Time in Photography: Perception Points Two WaysIn Scott Walden (ed.), Philosophy and Photography, . 2008.Combining ideas of perceptual psychologists J.J. Gibson and J.E. Cutting, moving on to answer the arguments of the "Naysayers" against autonomous and artistic meaning in photographs.
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56Review of Cynthia Freeland, Portraits and Persons: A Philosophical Inquiry (review)British Journal of Aesthetics 51 (4): 449-453. 2011.
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62Talbot’S Technologies: Photographic Depiction, Detection, and ReproductionJournal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 47 (3): 263-276. 1989.Philosophy's only celebration of photography's 150th, the long-neglected philosophical job of clarification: drawing basic distinctions and defining basic conceptions, including photographic depiction, photographic detection, 'photograph of', 'documentary'. More than a lexicon, it explains why photography is important, by historically characterizing it through its uses for depiction, detection, reproduction, all of which have shaped the modern world. By consideration of it as 'mechanical', the…Read more
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3PhotographyIn Berys Nigel Gaut & Dominic Lopes (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Aesthetics, Routledge. 2000.
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78Arts, Agents, Artifacts: Photography's AutomatismsCritical Inquiry 38 (4): 727-745. 2012.Recent advances in paleoarchaeology show why nothing in the Tate Modern, where a conference on "Agency & Automatism" took place, challenges the roots of 'the idea of the fine arts' (Kristeller) as high levels of craft, aesthetics, mimesis and mental expression, as exemplifying cultures: it is by them that we define our species. This paper identifies and deals with resistances, early and late, to photographic fine art as based on concerns about automatism reducing human agency--that is, mental e…Read more
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68Drawing and shooting: Causality in depictionJournal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 44 (2): 115-129. 1985.
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16Review of J. Kirk Varnedoe, A Fine Disregard: What Makes Modern Art ModernJournal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 49 (4): 390-392. 1991.
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1Pictures of Perspective: Theory or Therapy?In Margaret Atherton Heiko Hecht & Robert Schwartz (eds.), Looking into Pictures, . 2003.From a perceptual psychology and philosophy conference on linear perspective: points out standard fallacies about perspective, then challenges psychology's and philosophy's widespread assumption that a satisfactory understanding of depiction in any medium can be reached via theories of spatial--or any other kind of--visual perception.
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73Drawing Distinctions: The Varieties of Graphic ExpressionCornell University Press. 2005.First and still only philosophy treatise on drawing, explaining the bases of meaning in all kinds of drawings, including technical and informational, design, child, and art drawings--depictive and nondepictive, East and West--engaging cognitive and developmental psychology, philosophy, art history and criticism. Ca 290 double-columned pp., 92 illus. Reviews include: Philosophy--David Hills, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 65, no. 2 (Spring 2007): 235-237. Aesthetics--Michael Podro, Br…Read more
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37Review of Hubert Damisch, The Origin of Perspective (review)Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 55 (1). 1997.
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56Review of James Cutting, Impressionism and its CanonJournal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 65 (2). 2007.
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108The Engine of Visualization: Thinking Through PhotographyCornell University Press. 1997.First ever philosophy treatise on photography, analytic in approach but sensitive to photo-history, not confined to aesthetics or art (illus.), Walker Evans photo on cover. Papercover printing, Dec. 2000.
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Review of David Rosand, Drawing Acts: Studies in Graphic Expression and Representation (review)Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 63 (1): 81-82. 2005.
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Photo-OpportunityCanadian Review of American Studies 22 (3): 501-528. 1991.Review of literature and independent essay on the 1989 sesquicentennial of photography, winner of Canadian Association for American Studies 1991 award for paper that "best exemplifies the discipline of American Studies".
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20What drawings draws on: the relevance of current vision researchRivista di Estetica 47 9-29. 2011.Fifty years ago Ernst Gombrich’s Art and Illusion revolutionized philosophical and scientific study of visual representation by thoughtful -application of research from the modern vision sciences. Since then those sciences – recently including neuroscience – have greatly developed, and it is now common to attempt direct translation of their findings to depiction, even treating its perception as a branch of visual perception.Unfortunately, rather than advancing Gombrich’s project, many of these a…Read more
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111Portraits as displaysPhilosophical Studies 135 (1). 2007.Cynthia Freeland’s investigation of four kinds of ‘fidelity’ in portraiture is cut across by more general philosophical concerns. One is about what might be called the expression of persons--the persons or ‘inner selves’ of portrait subjects and of portrait artist: whether either is possible across each of the four kinds of fidelity, and whether these two kinds of expression are in tension. More fundamental is the problem of telling how self-expression is at all possible in any of these forms. F…Read more
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A Legacy of Light: Review of Ansel Adams: An Autobiography; and Mark Klett, Travels in the Desert Southwest (review)Canadian Review of American Studies 18 (1): 127-131. 1987.
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47Drawing Distinctions IPhilosophical Topics 25 (1): 231-253. 1997.Introduces philosophers to John Willats' effective new drawing systems vocabulary for describing drawings and related images, also stresses topological-space values in pictures, vs psychology's projective tendencies (illus).
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2Review of Richard Bolton (ed.), The Contest of Meaning: Critical Histories of PhotographyJournal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 50 (1): 68-71. 1992.Editor's errata: Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 52.2 (Spring 1994): 167.
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"We Can't, eh, Professors?": Photo AporiaIn James Elkins (ed.), The Art Seminar: Photography Theory, Routledge. 2006.
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Drawing, Painting, and Print-MakingIn Robert Hopkins (ed.), Blackwell Companion to Aesthetics, Wiley-blackwell. 2009.A short encyclopedia article focused on drawing, stressing facture, the physicality of three media.
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48‘Neuroaesthetics’, Gombrich, and DepictionBritish Journal of Aesthetics 56 (2): 191-201. 2016.For philosophical readers, a review of biology Nobel laureate Eric R. Kandel’s Age of Insight historical thesis, that today’s ‘neuroaesthetics’ is a continuation of Vienna’s great contributions to modernism from 1900 on, becomes a ‘critical study’, by closely examining Kandel’s valuable account of E.H. Gombrich’s psychology, then, broadly, his own case for the validity of ‘neuroaesthetics’. The article much credits Kandel for recognising and explaining—unlike most philosophers, with their episte…Read more