The American writer and art historian, Michael Fried, is perhaps the most pertinent of critics to offer a timely study on the encroachment of photography into the canon of fine art. Indeed, Fried’s rather cumbersome title, Why Photography Matters as Art as Never Before, echoes his declared position as an “evaluative” art critic where the active question was always: “What makes a good painting? What makes it a painting that matters?”.

Born in New York in 1939 and educated at Princeton and Harvard, Fried spent time in the UK as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University (Merton College). Although his sojourn in England, 1958-62, coincided with a pivotal time in British Art, as an acolyte of Clem Greenberg, Fried remained firmly focussed on the second generation of Abstract painters exemplified by Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland, Frank Stella and Jules Olitski; and likewise on the Modernist movement. His reputation was duly established in the essay Art & Objecthood (1967) with his theoretical observations on the validity of post-1945 American painting when compared with the overpowering advance of Minimalism. In this influential piece of art criticism he introduced the notion of “theatricality”, a barrier to the proper appreciation (absorption) of an artwork. He warned against the threat to art from this “theatricality”, from kitsch and mass culture, and the ascent of entertainment as a valid ingredient. Of course, if this concept is extrapolated to current trends in photography, one can immediately see its relevance.

A key factor for Fried in the evolution of photography as a serious counterpoint to painting was the technical ability to make photographic images on a large scale, literally wall size. This, he contends, induced a parallel with painting insofar as it compelled the photographer to consider the relationship between the image and the spectator – previously the province of the painter with the canvas.

Fried, therefore, approaches this survey on contemporary photographic developments with the eye of an art historian (his previous books have considered Édouard Manet, Gustave Courbet and 18^th century painting). He has selected certain photographers and video makers for in-depth analysis (Philippe Parreno, Jeff Wall, Cindy Sherman, Thomas Struth, Thomas Ruff, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Andreas Gursky, Patrick Faigenbaum, Roland Fischer, Thomas Demand, Candida Höfer, Beat Streuli, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Douglas Gordon, Luc Delahaye, Rineke Dijkstra, James Welling) and proceeds to detect and decipher the hidden (and overt) meanings in their works – with those of Jeff Wall being noticeably predominant. As might be imagined, this is no light reading for the commuter train.

In his Preface, Fried freely admits to putting aside a manuscript on Caravaggio to redirect his attention to recent art photography and, in doing so, began a programme of concentrated research that involved many photographers and opinion formers. In that sense, one imagines this weighty tome to be somewhat of a collaboration with the acknowledged avant-garde of contemporary photography, and it is true that the usual suspects are presented for a warm appreciation. Fried deduces that the above mentioned image makers (and others on the cutting edge) all belong to a “single photographic regime… a single complex structure of themes, concerns and representational strategies…”. He also declares that texts by favourite art milieu theoreticians: Heidegger, Hegel and Wittgenstein (plus the author’s own chums, Stanley Cavell and Robert Pippin) play a significant role in funding his analytical thought process. Fried is nothing if not honest. He is also clear in referring his current stance to that already recorded in his previously published texts and journalism.

And so we reach the fundamental confrontation of all: that of the individual artwork and the individual spectator. One of the great arrogances of contemporary art is that those who do not “see” the real meaning of a work are too stupid to do so. This is arrant nonsense of course. The artist clearly has a contrived “meaning” to transmit but it is beyond his or her control to predetermine the life experiences of the spectator, which will necessarily filter the reaction to any given image. But of course, it is the intellectual detective work required uncovering the original meaning and veiled reference that is the game here – and that which sorts the casual onlooker from the serious art scholar (and those that secure enviable tenures in the advanced education cosmos).

Joining Fried as he attempts the mammoth task of elucidating this investigative process across his range of chosen artists is one of the rewards of this occasionally over-complex book. In one example, Fried discusses Thomas Struth’s images inside the Pergamon Museum in Berlin (1996-2001). These were a variation on Struth’s other works in the Museum series, as the Pergamon has no paintings, but does introduce contrasts of scale within the expansive architectural cast galleries. Whereas Struth had previously made do with “candid” shots of visitors innocent of his intention, in these works he populates the gallery space and deliberately positions the audience. This device irritated the critics and Fried quotes their dismay (and distrust) of the images with their apparent lack of authenticity. Whilst Struth’s motivation (technical difficulties with exposure and the modern proclivity for audio guides as a substitute for looking) was reasonable, critics Peter Schjeldahl and Michael Kimmelman both detected a negative element of fakery. Fried adeptly recalls that this perception [of unexpected poses] as an artistic flaw has a long history – integral to developments in painting “from mid 1750s France to the advent of Manet”. Fried proposes that where the viewers “unthinkingly crave the seduction of the human subjects’ expected obliviousness to being beheld” they in fact react badly to being frustrated in this (thus inferring that the flaw is in the pejorative intuition of the aforementioned critics).

There is no doubt that certain contemporary art photographs demand this sort of arcane dissection in order to stand up against the sublimities of great painting – and Michael Fried excels with this provocative survey, excellently realized by Yale. Another view rapidly gaining ground is that we are entering the great age of Shakespearian photography – in other words – Much Ado About Nothing!

Michael Fried is currently J.R. Herbert Boone Professor of Humanities and the History of Art at The Johns Hopkins University.