Photography and its Critics: A Cultural History, 1839–1900 (Perspectives on Photography) - Hardcover

Marien, Mary Warner

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0521550432 ISBN 13: 9780521550437

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 1997

Synopsis

Photography and its Critics offers an original overview of nineteenth-century American and European writing about photography from such disparate fields as art theory, social reform, and physiology. In this study, Mary Warner Marien argues that photography was an important social and cultural symbol for modernity and change in several fields, such as art and social reform. Moreover, she demonstrates how photography quickly emerged as a pliant symbol for modernity and change, one that could as easily oppose progress as promote democracy.

About this title

Review

This dense overview of 19th-century American and European writing about photography is a photographic history situated in the humanities. "It presents photography as an idea, shaped by social concerns and inherited concepts," explains Mary Warner Marien, who examines how the medium developed as a symbol of social change. She looks at the evolving cultural notion of photography and shows how it emerged as a symbol for modernity. The text is enhanced by dozens of illustrations typifying the dimensions of a long-gone era's popular and artistic photography.

Review

"...the realization of a brilliant cultural history of photography in the nineteenth century." Mark B. Pohlad

"...look forward to reading as it is not stuffy or academic at all, but well written, easy to read and full of information presented in a new way." The Picture Professional

"marien's book is rich in its materials, both primary and secondary....The effect in general is of a branch of cultural history being thought through--...expounding on how nineteenth-century photographs of different kinds presented themselves. This...the field sorely needs." Mark Roskill, Visual Resources

About this edition

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0521550432
• ISBN 13: 9780521550437
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 242