Since its birth in the first half of the 19th century, photography has offered extraordinary possibilities of isolating works of art for study and pleasure. Through cropping, focus, angle of view, distance and lighting as well as the ex post facto techniques of dark room manipulation, collage, montage and assemblage, photographers not only interpret the artworks they record but create stunning reinventions. The Original Copy: Photography of Sculpture, 1939 to Today presents a critical examination of the intersections between photography and sculpture.

Through a selection of nearly 300 outstanding pictures by more than 100 artists from the 19th century to the present, The Original Copy explores how one medium has become implicated in the understanding of the other. Photographs reproduced in this richly illustrated volume range in subject from inanimate objects to performing bodies, and include major works by medium's most influential artists, from early modernism to the present.