By Katherine A. Bussard

From early amateur snapshots to today’s advanced digital images, photography has been the perfect means to record people’s lives. This provocative book explores the complex and varied ways that five contemporary photographers—Tina Barney, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Nan Goldin, Sally Mann, and Larry Sultan—use their own daily experiences as inspiration for their art. Each of these artists has created highly personal, shifting, and intriguing visions of his or her life. The works range from Tina Barney’s orchestrated depictions of her friends and family in affluent New England settings to Nan Goldin’s unabashed portrayal of intimate, and often brutally honest, moments. Sally Mann turned to her children and their surroundings as her subject, and Larry Sultan has accomplished something similar in his depictions of his parents. Philip-Lorca diCorcia offers up his “storybook life” in photographs that—like others in this group—span nearly 20 years.

So the Story Goes is arranged in portfolio format and features beautiful color reproductions of about 20 photographs by each artist. With an introductory essay that examines the development of personal narrative in photography, as well as insightful entries on each artist, the book analyzes how these works tell a life’s story.

Exhibition: September 16–December 3, 2006

The Art Institute of Chicago 2006
11 1/2 x 8 1/2 in.; 128 pages; 118 illustrations
Softcover $24.95 ISBN: 0300114117

Order online from the Art Institute Museum Shop or call 1-800-905-8537.

Available to booksellers at wholesale prices from Yale University Press.

Related exhibition: So the Story Goes