Metamorphoses: Photography in the Electronic Age

Metamorphoses: Photography in the Electronic Age (Aperture, $18.50) Both exciting and frustrating, Aperture's latest megabook features computer- generated, collaged, and altered photographs in what is by no means a comprehensive collection. It spans the trite, the political, and the romantic, but the technology behind the work is rarely explained. The amazing thing about the photography presented here isn't so much its ability to fool the eye, but rather how many of these artists use it in the service of 19th- century and modernist visions. Despite its trend-hopping tendencies (a section on virtual reality makes no mention of photography), Metamorphoses is an inexpensive sampler of the digital future. B+ -Margot Mifflin