Throughout the modern era, photography has been enlisted not only to document but also to classify the world and its people. Its status bolstered by a popular belief in the scientific objectivity of photographic evidence, photography has been used, from the earliest days of the medium, to produce and organize knowledge about the external world. Published to accompany the exhibition The Order of Things: Photography from The Walther Collection, this catalogue 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 Zhuang Huan, The Order of Things illustrates how typological methods in photography have developed around the globe. Edited by Brian Wallis, The Order of Things includes texts by Geoffrey Batchen, Tina Campt, Christopher Phillips, George Baker, Walter Benjamin, Michel Foucault, Michael Jennings, Ulrike Schneider, Allan Sekula and Joel Smith.
