The Original Copy: Photography of Sculpture 1839 to Today

Since its birth in the first half of the nineteenth century, photography has offered extraordinary possibilities of documenting, redefining, and disseminating works of art. Through crop, focus, angle of view, and lighting—as well as dark room manipulation, collage, montage, and assemblage—photographers not only interpret the works they record but create stunning reinventions.

The Original Copy presents a critical examination of the intersections between photography and sculpture, exploring how the one medium has become implicated in the understanding of the other. Through a selection of 300 pictures by more than 100 artists from the nineteenth century to the present, this volume looks at how and why sculpture became a photographic subject.

The images range in subject from inanimate objects to performing bodies, and include major works by Eugène Atget, Herbert Bayer, Constantin Brancusi, Brassaï, Claude Cahun, Marcel Duchamp, Fischli/Weiss, Lee Friedlander, David Goldblatt, Rachel Harrison, Hannah Hö ch, André Kertész, Man Ray, Bruce Nauman, Alina Szapocznikow, Gillian Wearing, Hannah Wilke and Iwao Yamawaki, among others.

The Original Copy was awarded First Place in the “Outstanding Exhibition Catalogue” category of the Association of Art Museum Curators (ACMC) 2010 Annual Awards for Excellence.