IN VISIBLE LIGHT: PHOTOGRAPHY AND THE AMERICAN WRITER 1840-1940 - Rare Fine Review Copy of The First Hardcover Edition/First Printing - ONLY REVIEW COPY ONLINE

Shloss, Carol (Author); James, Henry; Agee, James; Evans, Walker; Mailer, Norman & Other Subjects

ISBN 10: 0195038932 / ISBN 13: 9780195038934

Published by New York City, NY: Oxford University Press, 1987, 1987

About this Item

1st Printing. 308 pages. Published in 1987. Book-length study on subject. One of the most important books on the impact of photography on American literature in our time. Review Copy. Review Material laid-in. The First Hardcover Edition. Precedes and should not be confused with all other subsequent editions. Published in a small and limited first print run as a hardcover original only by a University Press. The First Edition is now scarce. Presents Carol Shloss' "In Visible Light: Photography And The American Writer 1840-1940". The single best account on photography's undeniable influence on modern American literature. "Explores the links between Hawthorne and the daguerreotype; Henry James and Alvin Langdon Coburn; Theodore Dreiser, Alfred Stieglitz, and Jacob Riis; John Dos Passos and Soviet photography; James Agee and Walker Evans; John Steinbeck and Dorothea Lange; and Norman Mailer and World War Two photography, notably Robert Capa and Margaret Bourke-White. Reveals in penetrating detail the values that underpin literature and photography" (Publisher's blurb). If this brilliant study is about one theme (instead of its intertwined two), it is summed up in one thoughtful line in the book, incontestable and cannot be improved upon: "Art and politics are of the same metaphysical substance" (Carol Shloss). The only other book of comparable (though not identical) interest that we know of is Gore Vidal's "Screening History" (1992), which discusses the impact of the visual image, with emphasis on cinema, on his entire life-work. An absolute "must-have" title for Carol Shloss collectors. This is a Review Copy. The Review Slip is laid-in. This title is a contemporary classic. As far as we know, this is the only Review Copy of the First Hardcover Edition/First Printing available online and is in especially fine condition: Clean, crisp, and bright. Please note: Copies available online have serious flaws or are remainder-marked. This is surely an accessible and lovely alternative. A rare copy thus. Lavishly illustrated with 40 plates. One of the most brilliant literary-cum-photography critic/scholars of our time. A fine copy. ISBN 0195038932. Seller Inventory # 13646

Bibliographic Details

Title: IN VISIBLE LIGHT: PHOTOGRAPHY AND THE ...

Publisher: New York City, NY: Oxford University Press, 1987

Publication Date: 1987

Binding: Hardcover

Condition: Fine

Dust Jacket Condition: Fine

Signed: no

Edition: 1st Edition.

About this title

Synopsis:

This is a book about the way that artists--both writers and photographers--approach their subjects and the choices they must make in creating art from their perceptions of other people's lives and experiences.
For the photographer, Carol Shloss notes, these choices come at the actual moment when he stands before his subject, seeking to capture it in some way within the technical limitations of the camera frame. For the writer--particularly the writer who chooses to seek out others and to make art from "opening up" to the presence of another person--the choices made are more hidden but nevertheless similar to the ones faced by the photographer: Shloss shows how the process of constituting a text and finding its material is in many ways like using a camera. Throughout, Shloss stresses the significance of the relationship between artist and subject, noting, "Whatever its desired end, art is drawn out of separateness and...the artist's terms of engagement with his or her subject are manifold, with referents in fear and in hope, in desire, fascination and hunger."
Filled with fascinating glimpses into the ways both writers and photographers work, the book explores the links between the two in chapters on Hawthorne and daguerreotypy; Henry James and Alvin Langdon Coburn; Theodore Dreiser, Alfred Stieglitz, and Jacob Riis; John Dos Passos and the Soviet cinema; James Agee and Walker Evans; John Steinbeck and Dorothea Lange; and Norman Mailer and World War II combat photography (especially that of Robert Capa and Margaret Bourke-White). Illustrated with some 40 photos, In Visible Light reveals in penetrating detail the values that underpin literature and photography, demonstrating that "art and politics are of the same metaphysical substance."

About the Author:

About the Author:
Carol Shloss currently holds the first Drexel Fellowship in the Humanities at Drexel University. She is the author of Flannery O'Connor's Dark Comedies and the forthcoming Gentlemen by Nature: The Photography of William Lyman and Loring Underwood.