Flash! : photography, writing, & surprising illumination / Kate Flint.

Includes bibliographical references (pages [355]-377) and index.

Prologue -- Flashes of light -- Lightning flashes -- Flash memory -- Stopping time -- Throwing light -- Light-skinned -- Death by exposure -- Theatrical light -- The modernity of flash -- Flash's aesthetics -- Endnotes -- Bibliography -- Index.

This book presents a fascinating cultural history of flash photography, from its mid-nineteenth century beginnings to the present day. All photography requires light, but the light of flash photography is quite distinctive: artificial, sudden, shocking, intrusive, and extraordinarily bright. It explores flash's power to reveal shocking social conditions, its impact on the representation of race, its illumination of what would otherwise remain hidden in darkness, and its capacity to put on display the most mundane corners of everyday life. The book builds a picture of flash's place in popular culture, and its role in literature and film.