Author(s): David Levi Strauss

Fiction

At this transitional moment in the field of photography, how should we consider what is to come for the medium? Can its past and present practitioners help guide us, both as creators and as observers? David Levi Strauss eminent author, critic, and teacher rises to the challenge of these questions and more in Words Not Spent Today Buy Smaller Images Tomorrow: Essays on the Present and Future of Photographs. In the course of twenty-five essays, Strauss discusses the work of artists who provoke us with revealing, clear-eyed investigations of the ostensibly patent world in front of us, and others who transport us to new realms, poetic and unreal creative minds ranging from Frederick Sommer, Helen Levitt, Daido Moriyama, and Joseph Beuys, to contemporary photographers Sally Mann, James Nachtwey, Susan Meiselas, Robert Bergman, Tim Davis, and many others.
Also considered are the groundbreaking theoretical writings of Susan Sontag and Jean-Luc Nancy, the films of Chris Marker and Stan Brakhage, and issues and events that have irrevocably altered the way we consider the medium of photography and how it communicates: 9/11, Abu Ghraib, the death of Osama bin Laden, the Arab Spring, and Occupy Wall Street. Words Not Spent Today is an incisive exploration of photography's changing role as a tool of evidence and conscience as we move forward into can we say it is a post-photographic era.