Primitivism and Photography Non-Western Art and Modern Photography: From 1918 to the Present

It is no secret that "primitive" art had a major impact on Western painting and sculpture in the 20th century. But what were its repercussions for photography? In this book Valentine Plisnier draws on a vast range of images to demonstrate that from the avant-gardes through the present day, and all over the world, artist-photographers have found primitive objects an endlessly rich source of inspiration.
Not only did these artifacts revivify the visual vocabulary of Dadaists and Surrealists like Man Ray, Hannah Höch, and Erwin Blumenfeld; they were themselves endowed with new significance by Alfred Stieglitz, Romare Bearden, Orlan, Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Alex Hirst and other artists engaged in a search for their roots, their identity, or new bearings for a world shaken by the tragedies and political and social upheavals of their times.
Marked by the sheer material/visual impact of primitive art, other photographers-Brassaï, and more recently Hughes Dubois, Nicolas Bruant and Frédéric Vidal, for example-have pushed photographic possibility to its limits, sometimes sacrificing the rules of representation and even the image of the object in question.
Here Valentine Plisnier highlights both the historical role of non-European art in photography, and its pervasive presence in the artistic imagination.

An art history researcher with a degree in Ethno-Aesthetics from Université Paris-I, Valentine Plisnier has published essays, lectures and articles internationally under the aegis of the Musée du Quai Branly, Paris, and the Berlinische Galerie, Berlin, and in the magazine Tribal Art. Here, in an authoritative, groundbreaking work featuring some 300 works by 80 different artists, she provides a historical, geographical and artistic overview of her subject that will delight lovers not only of primitive art and photography, but of modern and contemporary art as well.