Look is the outcome of a major research project initiated and directed by Anne Marsh, Professor of Theory in the Faculty of Art and Design at Monash University. The research was funded by the Australia Research Council, the first time it has supported a project on contemporary photography. This is significant for another reason: it provides a welcome alternative to the stretched resources of public institutions – art museums, and libraries – that have been key supporters (and publishers) in the field of Australian photographic history. The compilation of the material for the book was a mammoth undertaking, and Marsh was ably assisted by a small team of researchers, mostly postgraduate students. Melissa Miles, now Lecturer, Theory of Art and Design, was responsible for the extensive timeline that appears at the back.

A double portrait of Marsh on the contents page alludes to her role as being more than that of an author – she is a conductor perhaps, a conjuror, a maverick. I appreciate the metaphorical associations, but the image is overly prominent and strikes me as gratuitous. There is another portrait on the inside back cover, light streaming from and towards Marsh’s illuminated face; that alone would have been sufficient.

The book has three components: illustrations, essays, timeline. The illustrations are arranged into thematic groupings identified by the headings Identity, Life, Experiment, Space, and Environment. Each theme is broken down into sub-themes, all of which are crammed with images that contribute to the book’s overwhelmingly visual impact. Marsh’s five essays, which are placed after the illustrations, are the outcome of many years devoted to thinking and writing about contemporary art and photography. They reflect her deep interest in conceptual art, performance, the body, and identity, areas in which she has made a substantial contribution.

The essays’ strength is their consideration of art photography as a theoretically and culturally rich field of endeavour. However, due to their style of writing, theyare more likely to be read for work, study, or duty than for pleasure. They are framed by international debates, particularly those centring on ideas about postmodernism and the post-medium age developed mainly by North American writers. Rosalind Krauss leads the references in the index, but Hal Foster and Douglas Crimp are important, too, for the development of Marsh’s interrelated arguments. Walter Benjamin and Susan Sontag provide other crucial touchstones. 

Fiona Foley, Native blood, 1994, hand-coloured type C print, 39.6 x 49.8 cm, courtesy of the artist and Niagara Galleries, Melbourne

Marsh generally locates the efforts of Australian practitioners in relation to international developments in theory and practice, rather than dealing in detail with the specificity of local – that is, Australian – experience. For instance, in her discussion of postmodernism she describes the positions theorised by Foster and Abigail Solomon-Godeau, proceeds to discuss Paul Taylor’s Popism exhibition held at the National Gallery of Victoria, and then turns briefly to consider Australian photographic works.

Sometimes there is a serious mismatch between the North American and Australian situations that is not fully addressed. One example will suffice. Marsh argues that appropriation was more dynamic in photography than elsewhere in the arts, especially in the way it ‘challenged the canon of art history and the art market’. She cites the work of American photographer Sherrie Levine, whose acts of appropriation ‘created havoc in the art world as museums, curators and critics debated … [their] validity and legality’. But this is hardly relevant to Australia, where appropriation did not cause consternation. Indeed, why were the forms of appropriation practised by Anne Zahalka, Fiona Foley, Brook Andrew, and others so readily embraced by Australian art institutions and the art market?

Another issue I have with the essays is their level of generality. This is a result in part of the book’s structure: the historical detail is captured by the timeline, and the essays are confined to the enunciation of different theoretical positions. But it is also partly due to Marsh’s approach to photographs themselves. At times, the essays appear to have been written at one remove from them. For instance, in the discussion about conceptual photography, there is more on Canadian Jeff Wall’s views on photography than there is on individual photographic works.

Some of the claims made are questionable, or ahistorical. Photography is described as ‘the new medium that embraces late twentieth century and twenty-first century ideas’ and as a medium that ‘has challenged the authority of the fine art tradition’. Such claims for photography’s currency and/or radicalism have, of course, been advanced many times, in other historical moments. Similarly, the statement that photography challenged the art world’s disposition for ‘originals’, thus moving the market into the twenty-first century, elides the whole history of print-making, as well as earlier developments in the market for photography. One disappointing reality that Marsh does not attend to is that, despite the boom in art photography that began in the 1970s, the market is still barely viable. How many art photographers are able to support themselves through sales of their work?

The essay on Identity and the Archive is the most satisfying. It successfully integrates the discussion of ideas, issues, and work by Indigenous photographers such as Destiny Deacon and Tracey Moffatt. Marsh also writes strongly on performativity, especially in relation to the work of Pat Brassington and Peter Kennedy.

The final essay discusses the current situation in terms of Rosalind Krauss’s idea of ‘a post-medium condition’: that is, one in which photography is no longer a discrete entity. Marsh expresses anxiety about a particular kind of response to this, ‘the return to essentials’, which she considers ‘retrograde’ because it signifies a return to formalism, and is nostalgic and apolitical. However, the situation may be more complex than this suggests. A number of artists are using ‘old media’, such as photograms, in a critically reflective and engaged way. Their strategies may relate to the development of a radical ecology of images and an enlarged sensory vocabulary for photography.

Look positions art photography in Australia as a serious enterprise worthy of sustained attention, both visually and textually. Miles’s timeline incorporates extensive information about exhibitions, events, and publications, year by year. Designer Jenny Zimmer has succeeded in creating a dynamic layout, though the juxtaposition of images is occasionally unsympathetic. In her introductory remarks, Marsh notes that the starting point for the book was 1980, when photography came of age in the art world, entering it with ‘a kind of swagger’. The results of that swaggering across three intense decades of practice are world class. Look brings them to the fore, creating a major resource that will be indispensable for anyone interested in contemporary art photography and contemporary art.