The order of things

Throughout the modern era, photography has been enlisted to classify the world and its people. Driven by a belief in the scientific objectivity of photographic evidence, the systems utilized to classify photographs have shaped modern visual culture. Accompanying the exhibition “The Order of Things: Photography from The Walther Collection,” this book investigates the production and uses of serial portraiture, vernacular imagery, architectural surveys and time-based performance in photography from the 1880s to the present, bringing together works by artists from Europe, Africa, Asia and North America. Setting early modernist photographers Karl Blossfeldt and August Sander in dialogue with contemporary artists such as Ai Weiwei, Nobuyoshi Araki, Richard Avedon, Zanele Muholi, Stephen Shore and Zhang Huan, The Order of Things illustrates how typological methods in photography have developed globally.