For a recent review in Leonardo Reviews, Stephen Petersen discusses Tricks of the Light: Essays on Art and Spectacle by Jonathan Crary. Click here to learn more about the book. Click here to read the full review. An excerpt appears below:

“In the nearly four decades over which these essays appeared, Crary authored a series of influential books exploring the transformation of subjectivity within an increasingly mediated visual environment, starting with the early 19th century (Techniques of the Observer, 1990), through the turn of the 20th century (Suspensions of Perception: Attention, Spectacle and Modern Culture, 2000), and leading to the 21st century (24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep, 2013). His broad subject is the way human perception is instrumentalized and commodified within the culture of modernity.

Against the backdrop of these larger studies and the worldview they establish, these more occasional articles, essays, and reviews examine a range of topics, responding to specific theorists, authors, artists, architects, and filmmakers…. Explains Crary in his introduction, ‘My title, Tricks of the Light, is at least partly a shorthand for all the ‘techniques of the observer’ that have tethered us to a reified world of increasingly dematerialized commodities. But it also stands for the visionary projects of artists that challenge or elude the many phantasmagoric spheres of engineered appearances.’ This dual reference, turning on the possibility of light as an agent of control on the one hand, and method of resistance on the other, animates the book. Against the dominating technologies of digital culture, Crary highlights ‘counterpractices of chromaticism, opticality and luminosity’ that suggest ways to recover powers of perception and attention.”