Long before social media created a surfeit of globally interconnected images, the art world opened its previously narrow confines to include the true diversity of image production. Image Making chronicles Shelley Rice’s skillful navigation of two pivotal moments in this transformation: the pluralism of New York in the 1970s and the global outreach of digital networks in the 2010s. As one of our era’s most incisive and inspired photography and multimedia critics, Rice’s insightful reviews and articles chronicle this seismic shift, offering a deeply resonant exploration of art’s intersection with society. Her critical engagement with renowned artists and curators such as Manuel Álvarez Bravo, Ana Mendieta, Francesca Woodman, Lorraine O’Grady, Duane Michals, Gerhard Richter, Okwui Enwezor, Walid Raad, and Cindy Sherman sets a standard for understanding contemporary art and the vital role a seminal critic plays in shaping our visual culture. Image Making is indispensable reading for anyone interested in contemporary art, the role of criticism, and the deep interdependence of images and social, cultural, and political forces. Shelley Rice is a renowned art critic and historian who has lectured on visual media worldwide. She is the author of Parisian Views and the editor of Inverted Odysseys: Claude Cahun, Maya Deren, Cindy Sherman; co-author of The Book of 101 Books, Paris et le Daguerreotype, Jacques-Henri Lartigue, Vik Muniz: Incomplete Works, Candida Höfer: In Portugal, Marc Ferrez: Rio, and Unbranded: A Century of White Women by Hank Willis Thomas. Her writings have appeared in Artforum, Art in America, Art Journal, The New Republic, The Village Voice, Tate Papers, Bookforum, and Aperture, among others. She has received numerous awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Hasselblad Center grant, National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities awards, Senior Fulbrights to France and Turkey, a Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Residency, and the PEN/Jerard Award for Non-Fiction Essay. In 2010 she was named Chevalier in the Order of Arts and Letters by the French Minister of Culture. She teaches at New York University. "Shelley Rice's perspectives were and are still uniquely fresh and insightful.” —Anne Tucker, curator and essayist for fifty years "Rice’s wide-ranging observations about the art of creating photographs and its relationship to her own life are vivid, original, and profound.” —Kenneth E. Silver, Silver Professor of Art History Emeritus, New York University “Image Making is a testament to Shelley Rice’s enduring influence and the vital role she plays in shaping how we see and understand the world." —Hank Willis Thomas "While gathering her critical essays for Image Making , Shelley Rice recognized that 'intelligence, curiosity, and respect' were her mainstays as she built a global view of art. Her perspectives were and are still uniquely fresh and insightful." -Anne Tucker, curator and essayist for fifty years " I remember reading Parisian Views over twenty years ago and immediately being struck by Shelley Rice's beautiful prose and thought-provoking insights....From that moment on, I knew that I would follow her time and again, down her various rabbit holes. And she did not disappoint as she opened doors to various known and unknown artistic, historical, and critical universes." -Walid Raad, artist and Professor of Photography, Bard College "Shelley Rice is an incisive, sagacious, and unafraid observer of the field of photography. Although she got in fights with some prominent artists, she remained unafraid. Over forty years, her scope expanded from the downtown New York scene to the international stage. Image Making: Essays on Visual Culture (1978-2018) is an essential survey of our visual world." -Martha Wilson, artist and Founding Director Emerita of Franklin Furnace Archive, Inc. "The photo criticism of Shelley Rice evolved in the space that was once called New Journalism and is now a venerable and still exciting, hybrid place of the objective (for want of a better word) and the personal. In Image Making: Essays on Visual Culture, 1978-2018 , Rice's wide-ranging observations about the art of creating photographs and its relationship to her own life are vivid, original, and profound." -Kenneth E. Silver, Silver Professor of Art History Emeritus, New York University "A joy to read. Each essay is a force field, a graven memory, philosophy as fresh as day. Reading this book is like walking through a portal, a different one, time after time; an adventure in high seriousness." -Alexander Nemerov, author of Fierce Poise: Helen Frankenthaler and 1950s New York "Shelley Rice's brilliant essays on image making tell it like it is in forty years of commentary from the art world or worlds. An integral voice in the course that finally anointed photography as an art form, her erudite and readable prose is global in scope and critical in the