At First Sight: Photography and the Smithsonian

Foresta, Merry A.

ISBN 10: 1588341801 / ISBN 13: 9781588341808

Published by Smithsonian Books, 2004

About this Item

Book shows some shelf & handling wear, including minor edge wear and cover scuffing. Pages are slightly worn. Interiors are intact with unmarked text/pictures. Good reading copy.

Seller Inventory # mon0004216069

Bibliographic Details

• Title: At First Sight: Photography and the Smithsonian
• Publisher: Smithsonian Books
• Publication Date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1588341801
• ISBN 13: 9781588341808
• Binding: paperback
• Condition: Good

About this title

Synopsis

The Smithsonian holds more than 13 million images spanning over 150 years of taking and collecting photographs. This largely unknown body of photography (most never before published) represents nothing less than the Smithsonian's effort, in the name of all Americans, to describe and comprehend the world. Open anywhere in these pages to be plunged into the history of our modernity, and see what the Smithsonian deemed important to document and preserve. The famous, the infamous, and the never-before-seen are here in a remarkable “democracy of images”: Amelia Earhart, Abraham Lincoln, P.T. Barnum and Tom Thumb, John Brown, Frederick Douglass, Lucille Ball, Greta Garbo, Babe Ruth; the earliest views of the moon and the earliest panoramic view of Damascus; rare Native American photography; views of Asia, Africa, and the American West; photographs of early flight, and much, much more. By recording the act of seeing, and of what was seen, both photography and the Smithsonian have shaped our sense of ourselves, as individuals, as a people, and as a country.

About the Author

Merry A. Foresta is senior curator of photography at the Smithsonian Institution and author of Perpetual Motif: The Photography of Man Ray.