This book - the first devoted to this subject - will help museums and galleries understand and analyze contemporary and historic images of all kinds - from documentary to found photographs, from journals to performance, play, and online photo-sharing - and it demonstrates in action the new analytical tools and skills needed. In over 300 pages and 68 colour images, among the many varied photographers whose work is illustrated and explored by an international team of curators, academics and researchers are Robert Frank, Daido Moriyama, Richard Mosse, Eadweard Muybridge, Ed Ruscha and Garry Winogrand.

The Reflexive Photographer emphasizes the fact that a photograph rarely stands alone. When we look at a photograph we’re interested not only in the photograph itself, but in the photograph and its context. The image has a relationship to its maker, to the viewer, to the time and place it was made - and to how it is being “consumed”. And with unprecedented numbers of new images now being created - Instagram users have uploaded over 5 billion, Facebook users a massive seven petabytes every month - the need to gain these new tools and skills has never been more urgent!