"Takes a critical look at photography's credibility as a simulacrum or a bona-fide representation of the truth. It challenges our common perception of the photograph as an unassailable representation of reality by presenting the work of contemporary American artists who call attention to the medium's inherently paradoxical nature--its ability to engage in outrageous fictions while preserving a demeanor of objectivity and truth. VISUAL PARADOX leads one through the rebellious early years of staged or directorial photography in the 1960s and ... the 1970s and 1980s ... also features both early and recent examples of conceptual photography, images that question the nature of photographic representation as well as the mechanisms of human perception. Finally, it explores a variety of current postmodern activities that use photography to expose the fictions of mass-media images, to investigate the paradoxical relationship between pictures and language, and to critique the ambiguity and paradoxes of representation itself."