The ‘Other’ in the history of photography

Because photography was seen as the ideal tool for providing evidence due to its perceived indexicality, it was used to observe and record the face and head. In the 1850s and 1860s the British eugenicist Francis Galton obtained portrait photographs of criminals from the archive of Millbank Prison. He meticulously re-photographed theses pictures, exposing a

Susan Sontag’s criticism of Diane Arbus

From On Photography, (1977) Susan Sontag, London: Penguin, pages 32-48. Untitled – 1, 1970-1971. Diane Arbus Notes & passages of interest. Sontag begins her essay comparing an exhibition of 112 photographs by Diane Arbus that was exhibited in 1972 in at The Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York city that drew large crowds