ON THE CAMERA ARTS AND CONSECU

As Hollis Frampton's photographs and celebrated experimental films weretesting the boundaries of "the camera arts" in the 1960s and 1970s, hisprovocative and highly literate writings were attempting to establish anintellectually resonant form of discourse for these critically underexplored fields.It was a time when artists working in diverse disciplines were beginning to pick upcameras and produce films and videotapes, well before these practices wereunderstood or embraced by institutions of contemporary art. This collection ofFrampton's writings presents his critical essays (many written for Artforum andOctober) along with additional material, including lectures, correspondence, interviews, and production notes and scripts. It replaces--and supersedes--thelong-unavailable Circles of Confusion, published in 1983. Frampton ranged widelyover the visual arts in his writing, and the texts in this collection display hisunique approaches to photography, film, and video, as well as the plastic andliterary arts. They include critically acclaimed essays on Edward Weston andEadweard Muybridge as well as appraisals of contemporary photographers; theinfluential essay, "For a Metahistory of Film," along with scripts, textual material, and scores for his films; writings on video that constitute aprehistory of the digital arts; a dialogue with Carl Andre (his friend and formerPhillips Andover classmate) from the early 1960s; and two inventive, almostunclassifiable pieces that are reminiscent of Borges, Joyce, and Beckett.