The recording machine: art and fact during the Cold War

Offering a revealing look at the irrevocable change in art during the 1960s and its relationship to the modern culture of fact, this refreshing and erudite book provides a new understanding of the transformation of photography and the visual arts around 1968.

Author Joshua Shannon reveals an oddly stringent realism in the period, tracing artists' rejection of essential truths in favour of surface appearances.

Dubbing this tendency factualism, Shannon illuminates not only the Cold War's preoccupation with data but also the rise of a pervasive culture of fact.

Focusing on America and West Germany, where photodocumentary traditions intersected with 1960s politics, Shannon investigates a broad variety of art, ranging from conceptual photography and earthworks to photorealist painting and abstraction.