Eisinger, Joel. Trace & Transformation: American Criticism of Photography from the Modernist Period by Joel Eisinger.

University of New Mexico Press, 1999. 1st paperback printing. ISBN 0-8263-2041-4. [Photographers and subjects include Edward Steichen; Beaumont Newhall; Nancy Newhall; Ansel Adams; Elisabeth McCausland; Walker Evans; Dorothea Lange; Alfred Stieglitz; Socialism; Aesthetics; Criticism; Edward Weston; Art History]. New in original shrink wrap. Issued at $19.95. Summary:

Trace & Transformation: American Criticism of Photography from the Modernist Period by Joel Eisinger is a comprehensive historical survey of American photographic theory and art criticism.

• Overview: Published by the University of New Mexico Press, the book examines how photography came to be recognized and analyzed as a legitimate fine art medium.

• Scope: It spans from late 19th-century Pictorialism and Alfred Stieglitz’s Photo-Secession, through the straight photography movement, the documentary and magazine photography of the 1930s and 1940s, and the mid-century critical revival, concluding with 1970s formalism.

• Themes: Eisinger addresses the core philosophical struggles faced by critics, exploring questions of how photography functions as art and what defines its pure modernist core.