Looking for the "index"

For all of the photographers out there, I highly recommend the book, Photography Theory, in which James Elkins leads a group of art historians in a panel discussion on what photography is, how it's related to the art world, and how it should be considered and handled in 21st century art criticism. The actual transcript of the panel discussion is kind of strange: it definitely creates more questions than answers (something you'll be used to if you're as big a fan of LOST on tv as I am!), and many of the historians and theorists get stuck on the issue of the "index." That is, can a photograph really be considered a reasonable referent to the real world? A photograph isn't the real thing, but it's meant to stand in for the real thing. The panel went round and round on this issue without really getting anywhere, but what is great about the book is that James Elkins asked a whole bunch of OTHER historians and critics to look at the panel transcript and write their own response to it. The result is that you get lots of very well-informed opinions on the matter, and, for me, I began to understand why particular photographers working today - Gursky, Ruff, Burtynzky, the Bechers, are so HUGE in the art world right now. All of them are ground in "index": making unemotional records of the world (people, buildings, landscape) that, even if digital manipulation is done in some instances, look real. Seems to be the big thing currently.

Anyway, great book.