Photography: A User’s Manual

In order to clarify the history and methodology of this publication, we should first say that it is intended as broad and inclusive overview of the photography now being produced in Portugal within the context of the visual arts, while avoiding a disciplinary analysis of photography. We could say that this book is more focused on the field of the photographic than in the field of photography itself — this is, on the field of photography as an expression that is subsidiary to a tradition (however fictional it may be) included in a history of photography. Therefore, this book does not claim to pertain to the discipline of the history of photography, even if it can be used as a source and contribute to some systematization of the field. A key issue in this publication, the claim that the reflection on photography has had very interesting developments within the cultural field of the visual arts, much more than within the specific disciplinary field of photography — something that should be seen as a consequence of the widespread dilution of disciplinary boundaries in the last five decades.

Delfim Sardo