Mark Rawlinson

I have research research specialisms in American modernist painting and photography (1890 onwards), as well as expertise in post-war American photography.

My research and teaching focuses on the development of modern and contemporary American art, photography, and visual cultures, with an interest also in critical and photographic theory. My current research examines the foundations of the so-called 'photo-boom' in American photography in the 1970s, exploring how the development of educational programmes, and new networks, such as the Society for Photographic Education, were crucial for this moment in photographic history.

This recent research relates to previous work on early American Modernisms, particularly the work of Charles Sheeler [Charles Sheeler: Modernism, Precisionism and the Borders of Abstraction (IB Tauris: 2007]), as well as the development of American Visual Cultures (American Visual Culture (Bloomsbury, 2009). I have written about Ed Ruscha and Artist's Books (Various Small Books, MIT 2013), and photographer Robert Adams (in Reframing the New Topographics, University of Chicago Press) a have consderiable expertise in New Topographics photography.

I have a long standing interest in critical and visual theory, especially Theodor Adorno, but am also interested in the work of Walter Benjamin, Freud, Deleuze, Bataille and Derrida.