The latest in the best-selling .Isms series. Concisely written, Isms: Understanding Photography packs an enormous amount of detail into a handy and attractive format tracing the evolution of photography through a series of interconnected trends, groups, themes and movements, from the invention of the photographic process to the post internet age in which photographers produce works entirely in-computer, abandoning traditional capture and print methods.The book is organized chronologically and covers the evolution and development of photography. More than 50 chapters give concise, readable and jargon-free but scholarly insight into and explanation of a complex subject: an in-depth and clear exposition of the subject in a brief, attractive and accessible editorial format. Aimed at the interested general reader or first year undergraduate, the book considers all the major photographers, movements and themes of the past 170 or so years, moving from Daguerre through the first technical advances that enabled the recording of the world in the mid to late nineteenth century; the start of photography as fine art with Photo-Secessionism and Pictorialism; early moves into street, fashion, industrial and architectural photography; the birth of Modernism and all the key 'isms' of the first half of the twentieth century; war photography and the candid portrait; The Family of Man; the high points of photojournalism; and on through the postwar avant-garde to contemporary issues and trends, from paparazzi to contemporary photo-diarists, environmentally engaged photographers and the new formalists.Completely international and comprehensive in scope, Isms: Understanding Photography is an essential purchase for anyone interested in this subject, one that in the Instagram age is of more resonance and general interest than ever before.