Light Years: Conceptual Art and the Photograph 1964-1977

Among its many accomplishments, the pioneering movement known broadly as Conceptual Art succeeded in bringing photography definitively into the mainstream of contemporary art. Artists such as Ed Ruscha, Bruce Nauman, John Baldessari, Eleanor Antin, and Sigmar Polke took up the production of new photographs—as opposed to using found images from mass media and consumer culture like the Pop artists—and placed photography firmly on an equal basis with avant-garde painting and sculpture. They did this by exploiting the photographic image in every way possible: in books, slides, canvases, films, and room-size installations. The results were liberating for all the arts and made it possible for contemporary art to become a field without a medium.