"This publication is a major scholarly contribution attached to one of the most significant art museum collections in the world. Drawing on holdings from across the Art Institute in photographs, photobooks and magazines, and the moving image, this richly argued publication features 75 keyword entries by prominent artists as well as museum and university researchers on topics urgent for understanding the photographic field today. Accompanying these concise essays are more than 400 high-quality illustrations of works chosen from the very core of the museum's collections - selections that amplify the authors' arguments while suggesting additional dialogues across conventional divisions of chronology, geography, technology, and genre. An introductory essay reviews with a critical eye the museum's various and changing investments in photography and media from the moment of its first formal acquisition of photographs, in 1949"--