This groundbreaking survey of international photography, which examines the discipline across the full range of its uses by both professionals and amateurs, has been expanded and brought up to date for this second edition. Each of the eight chapters takes a period of up to 40 years and examines the medium through the lenses of art, science, social science, travel, war, fashion, the mass media and individual practitioners. These broad topics complement a fully developed cultural context whose emphasis is more on key ideas than individuals. The author also pays close attention to how contemporary practitioners, commentators and beholders have talked about specific works, the nature of photography and the photographer's changing role in society.

Mary Warner Marien is a professor in the Department of Fine Arts at Syracuse University, New York, where she teaches courses on photographic history as well as on art criticism and its history. She is the author of Photography and Its Critics (Cambridge University Press, 1997) as well as numerous articles on the history of photography.