To Photograph Is to Learn How to Die

Om boken

A book-length essay about photography's unique ability to ease the ache of human mortality. Drawing on the writings of Wallace Stevens, Marilynne Robinson and other poets, artists, musicians and thinkers, Brooklyn-based photographer Tim Carpenter argues passionately—in one main essay and a series of lively digressions—that photography is unique among the arts in its capacity for easing the fundamental ache of our mortality; for managing the breach that separates the self from all that is not the self; for enriching one's sense of freedom and personhood; and for cultivating meaning in an otherwise meaningless reality. The text design follows several channels of thought, inviting various approaches to reading. A unique and instructive contribution to the literature on photography, Carpenter's research offers both a timely polemic and a timeless resource for those who use a camera.