Pub Date : 2021-04-03DOI: 10.1080/03087298.2021.2079232
Samuel Ewing
In February 1976, the inaugural issue of the photography journal Camerawork ran a ‘Statement of Aims’ on its back cover, spelling out the ambitions of its freshly minted editorial team. Dedicated to forging new connections between photography and politics, the statement’s authors declaim that ‘Our central concern in photography [... ] is not “Is it art?” but, “Who is it for?”’ Photographic historian Noni Stacey draws readers’ attention to this particular statement early on in her book, viewing it as a keystone to understanding the lasting contributions of a number of photography collectives that emerged in 1970s London. These collectives, and the development of a mode of photographic production that Stacey identifies as ‘community photography’, are the subject of this archivally rich publication. Indeed, the great strength of Stacey’s book derives from the way she delves deep into the pragmatic, and often unresolved, debates of these practitioners themselves as they sought to build a politically viable photographic practice within Britain’s marginalised and underserved communities. Across six chapters, Stacey focuses on the most notable groups engaged in community photography during this period: those associated with the Half Moon Photography Workshop and affiliated journal Camerawork; the Hackney Flashers; the Exit Photography Group; the North Paddington Community Darkroom (NPCD); and the Blackfriars Photography Project (BPP). What readers encounter is a series of detailed microhistories that together sketch the contours of a practice that sparked heated critical and theoretical debates among politically committed photographers that extended far beyond its initial point of emergence. Photography of Protest and Community: The Radical Collectives of the 1970s had its genesis as a doctoral thesis, and the archival research and oral histories compiled by Stacey will remain a lasting contribution of this text. Stacey has a remarkable ability to let the tensions, contradictions and difficulties encountered by her protagonists remain a central part of the history, underscoring the rich complexity of community photography. By quoting her subjects liberally throughout the book, Stacey gives her readers the opportunity to grapple with a new corpus of primary sources. Above all, the approach indicates Stacey’s interest in the specificity of photographic practice rather than the theoretical battles that typically accompany such radical practices. In this way, scholars on the subject will view Stacey’s book as a welcome complement to other studies of the era’s politicised documentary practitioners, such as artist and curator Jorge Ribalta’s Not Yet: On the Reinvention of Documentary and the Critique of Modernism, 1972–1991 (2015). Chapter one lays the broad historical and methodological groundwork for the case studies that follow, beginning by distinguishing ‘community photography’ from other traditions of documentary practice. At its core, Stacey’s definiti
1976年2月,摄影杂志《Camerawork》的创刊号在封底上刊登了一篇“目标声明”(Statement of Aims),阐述了新组建的编辑团队的雄心壮志。该声明的作者致力于在摄影和政治之间建立新的联系,他们宣称:“我们对摄影的核心关注……而不是“这是艺术吗?”而是“这是给谁的?”摄影历史学家Noni Stacey在她的书中把读者的注意力吸引到这一特别的陈述上,将其视为理解20世纪70年代伦敦出现的一些摄影集体的持久贡献的基石。这些集体,以及一种被Stacey称为“社区摄影”的摄影生产模式的发展,是这本档案丰富的出版物的主题。事实上,斯泰西这本书的强大之处在于,她深入探讨了这些实践者本身的实用主义,而这些争论往往是悬而未决的,因为他们试图在英国边缘化和服务不足的社区中建立一种政治上可行的摄影实践。在六个章节中,Stacey重点介绍了这一时期从事社区摄影的最著名的群体:与半月摄影工作室和附属杂志Camerawork相关的群体;哈克尼闪影者;出口摄影组;北帕丁顿社区暗房(NPCD);以及黑衣修士摄影计划(BPP)。读者看到的是一系列详细的微观历史,它们共同勾勒出一种实践的轮廓,这种实践在政治摄影师中引发了激烈的批评和理论辩论,远远超出了最初的出现点。《抗议与社区摄影:20世纪70年代的激进集体》的起源是一篇博士论文,史黛西编纂的档案研究和口述历史将是本书的持久贡献。斯泰西有一种非凡的能力,让她的主人公所遇到的紧张、矛盾和困难成为历史的中心部分,强调了社区摄影的丰富复杂性。通过在书中大量引用她的主题,斯泰西给她的读者提供了一个与新的主要来源语料库搏斗的机会。最重要的是,这种方法表明了斯泰西对摄影实践的特殊性的兴趣,而不是通常伴随着这种激进实践的理论斗争。通过这种方式,研究这一主题的学者将把斯泰西的书视为对这个时代政治化纪录片实践者的其他研究的一个受欢迎的补充,比如艺术家兼策展人豪尔赫·里巴尔塔的《尚未:纪录片的重塑和现代主义批判,1972-1991》(2015)。第一章为接下来的案例研究奠定了广泛的历史和方法论基础,首先将“社区摄影”与其他传统的纪录片实践区分开来。在其核心,斯泰西的定义强调了实践者的愿望,即通过他们对摄影作品的生产、分发和接受的替代模式的拥抱,以及用于组织这些努力的集体、反等级结构,缩短观察者和被观察者之间的距离。史黛西的历史观点也有助于理解书中主人公的政治观点。她将这些集体的发展置于一个时代,在这个时代,英国的立法和代表政治未能创造出20世纪60年代所梦想的“无阶级”社会。斯泰西认为,她的研究对象的DIY、以社区为中心的方法,除了对分裂的左翼政党的普遍不信任之外,也是对这些政治和经济缺陷的一种反应。也正是在这里,Stacey宣布这种面向社区的精神是她自己的,并解释了她希望这本书能够被学院以外的从业者所接受。随后的章节转向一系列具体的集体,场所和定义社区摄影的方法的详细描述,从第二章中的半月画廊(HMG)和相关人物开始。HMG位于伦敦东区的白教堂区,这是一个由工人阶级和移民社区定义的社区,自20世纪30年代以来,他们一直是改革政策和纪录片制作的目标,通过政府的大规模观察项目。斯泰西特别关注画廊创始人温迪·埃瓦尔德(Wendy Ewald),以及她希望将评论管理民主化的愿望
{"title":"Photography of Protest and Community: The Radical Collectives of the 1970s","authors":"Samuel Ewing","doi":"10.1080/03087298.2021.2079232","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/03087298.2021.2079232","url":null,"abstract":"In February 1976, the inaugural issue of the photography journal Camerawork ran a ‘Statement of Aims’ on its back cover, spelling out the ambitions of its freshly minted editorial team. Dedicated to forging new connections between photography and politics, the statement’s authors declaim that ‘Our central concern in photography [... ] is not “Is it art?” but, “Who is it for?”’ Photographic historian Noni Stacey draws readers’ attention to this particular statement early on in her book, viewing it as a keystone to understanding the lasting contributions of a number of photography collectives that emerged in 1970s London. These collectives, and the development of a mode of photographic production that Stacey identifies as ‘community photography’, are the subject of this archivally rich publication. Indeed, the great strength of Stacey’s book derives from the way she delves deep into the pragmatic, and often unresolved, debates of these practitioners themselves as they sought to build a politically viable photographic practice within Britain’s marginalised and underserved communities. Across six chapters, Stacey focuses on the most notable groups engaged in community photography during this period: those associated with the Half Moon Photography Workshop and affiliated journal Camerawork; the Hackney Flashers; the Exit Photography Group; the North Paddington Community Darkroom (NPCD); and the Blackfriars Photography Project (BPP). What readers encounter is a series of detailed microhistories that together sketch the contours of a practice that sparked heated critical and theoretical debates among politically committed photographers that extended far beyond its initial point of emergence. Photography of Protest and Community: The Radical Collectives of the 1970s had its genesis as a doctoral thesis, and the archival research and oral histories compiled by Stacey will remain a lasting contribution of this text. Stacey has a remarkable ability to let the tensions, contradictions and difficulties encountered by her protagonists remain a central part of the history, underscoring the rich complexity of community photography. By quoting her subjects liberally throughout the book, Stacey gives her readers the opportunity to grapple with a new corpus of primary sources. Above all, the approach indicates Stacey’s interest in the specificity of photographic practice rather than the theoretical battles that typically accompany such radical practices. In this way, scholars on the subject will view Stacey’s book as a welcome complement to other studies of the era’s politicised documentary practitioners, such as artist and curator Jorge Ribalta’s Not Yet: On the Reinvention of Documentary and the Critique of Modernism, 1972–1991 (2015). Chapter one lays the broad historical and methodological groundwork for the case studies that follow, beginning by distinguishing ‘community photography’ from other traditions of documentary practice. At its core, Stacey’s definiti","PeriodicalId":13024,"journal":{"name":"History of Photography","volume":"45 1","pages":"202 - 204"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43496814","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-04-03DOI: 10.1080/03087298.2022.2062907
P. Trnkova
This article considers the daguerreotype and electricity as the key driving forces in the early histories of photography and photomechanical reproduction. Drawing on three examples – daguerreotype electrotypes, galvanically etched daguerreotypes and the etching process developed by Hippolyte Fizeau – the article aims to demonstrate how closely they were connected and how much interest they raised among scientists and photographers in the early 1840s, particularly in France, Britain and the German-speaking countries. The article shows in what ways the three processes were employed and who developed and used them, which institutions and learned societies were involved in their progress and which theoretical concepts and discussions they gave rise to. Although all three were only short-lived technologies and were largely forgotten by the end of the 1850s, they are more than mere curiosities, as they contribute significantly to our better understanding of the earliest histories of photography and photomechanical reproduction.
{"title":"Electrifying Daguerreotypes: On Correlations Between Electricity and Photography around 1840","authors":"P. Trnkova","doi":"10.1080/03087298.2022.2062907","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/03087298.2022.2062907","url":null,"abstract":"This article considers the daguerreotype and electricity as the key driving forces in the early histories of photography and photomechanical reproduction. Drawing on three examples – daguerreotype electrotypes, galvanically etched daguerreotypes and the etching process developed by Hippolyte Fizeau – the article aims to demonstrate how closely they were connected and how much interest they raised among scientists and photographers in the early 1840s, particularly in France, Britain and the German-speaking countries. The article shows in what ways the three processes were employed and who developed and used them, which institutions and learned societies were involved in their progress and which theoretical concepts and discussions they gave rise to. Although all three were only short-lived technologies and were largely forgotten by the end of the 1850s, they are more than mere curiosities, as they contribute significantly to our better understanding of the earliest histories of photography and photomechanical reproduction.","PeriodicalId":13024,"journal":{"name":"History of Photography","volume":"45 1","pages":"111 - 127"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41895671","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-01-02DOI: 10.1080/03087298.2021.1999073
Édouard de Saint-Ours
This article traces the circulation of photographs taken in Beijing in 1865 and 1866 by Georges Morache, a medical doctor stationed at the French legation. Including sights of the city, portraits and staged outdoor scenes depicting local trades, these pictures were disseminated from the mid-1870s in two directions simultaneously. While they were issued for about twenty-five years as wood-engraved reproductions in illustrated travel publications, they also circulated up until 2003 as prints and lantern slides within anthropological institutions. This article examines the diverse material and semiotic adaptations that these photographs were subjected to along their twofold circulation. Not only verifying the mutability of photographic meaning, this case also highlights affinities between the concerns of institutionalised anthropology, popular education and illustrated travel publications in the late nineteenth century. Ultimately, the dynamic circulation of these photographs in the West fulfilled a popular desire to scrutinise Chinese people and culture – a desire that was contingent on the informal empire upheld by western powers in China since the Opium Wars.
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Pub Date : 2021-01-02DOI: 10.1080/03087298.2021.2019386
Julien Faure-Conorton
This article, examining the circulation of prints, letters and ideas in the context of Pictorialism, deals with an ambitious but long-forgotten federation, the International Society of Pictorial Photographers. Founded in 1905 but almost immediately abandoned, this utopian project to simplify the organisation of international exhibitions did not alter the future of pictorial photography as it was intended to do. Studying its origins, creation and rules, and revealing the causes of its failure, this article sheds light on the politics of Pictorialism and examines one of its most ambivalent characteristics, namely the defence of national interests within a movement relying mostly on international collaboration. It also shows the central role played by Robert Demachy (1859–1936) and Alfred Stieglitz (1864–1946) in the matter. Despite its disappointing outcome, this story is that of a remarkable exchange of opinions, through sustained correspondence and texts, dealing mainly with the circulation of prints, among members of a global photographic network.
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Pub Date : 2021-01-02DOI: 10.1080/03087298.2021.1997200
Michel Hardy-Vallée
Despite its popular and critical success, the photographic book Changing New York as it appeared in 1939 has long been known to have compromised the intentions of photographer Berenice Abbott and writer Elizabeth McCausland because of the imperatives of the publisher, E. P. Dutton. First conceived by the authorial couple as a formally innovative and visually arresting tapestry of text and image about the rapidly transforming metropolis, the volume ultimately sold to the visitors of the New York World’s Fair ended up as a much more conventional guidebook to the city. Abbott’s selection of photographs, despite a number of cuts, survived the editorial process better than did McCausland’s captions, which were rewritten beyond recognition by the publisher, her name relegated to the inside cover. In reproducing most of the relevant primary evidence of this process alongside a perceptive study of the core ideas animating Abbott and McCausland at that time, Sarah M. Miller facilitates a fuller understanding of what Changing New York could have been and its role in the construction of documentary photography in the USA. A contributed essay by Julia Van Haaften and Gary Van Zante also gives an overview of Abbott’s archival habits and the afterlife of her massive trove of materials, as well as insights into the dynamics of her working partnership with McCausland. As a whole, Documentary in Dispute pays remarkable and detailed attention to the tensions that changed Changing New York, but it is debatable whether it delivers ‘the original manuscript’, and to what extent such a term applies to the present case. Upon returning to the USA in 1929 after eight years in Paris, Berenice Abbott reoriented her photographic practice from portraiture to portraying the urban landscape of New York. Skyscrapers sprouting as if overnight and the upheavals of the Great Depression were profoundly affecting the built and lived space of the city. Her 1934 solo exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York showed the originality of her approach inspired by both social sciences and surrealism, which caught the eye of art critic Elizabeth McCausland. When Abbott was granted support from the Federal Arts Project of the Works Progress Administration, she was able to put all her energies into her ‘Changing New York’ project and hire assistants to produce her photographic survey of change, transformation and juxtaposition in the urban environment. A second exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York in 1937 and the approaching 1939 World’s Fair convinced E. P. Dutton to contract with the Works Progress Administration to publish photographs from Abbott’s project. Although she had initially planned to publish her Works Progress Administration photographs alongside older ones, Abbott was restricted to the ‘Changing New York’ corpus, but she was now able to hire McCausland to write the captions. Together, they prepared a first proposal for the book that included a twenty-three-page
尽管1939年出版的摄影书《改变纽约》在评论界获得了广泛的成功,但长期以来,人们一直认为,由于出版商E.P.Dutton的迫切需要,这本书损害了摄影师Berenice Abbott和作家Elizabeth McCausland的意图。这本书最初由这对作家夫妇构思,是一本关于这座快速转型的大都市的正式创新和视觉上引人注目的文本和图像挂毯,最终卖给了纽约世界博览会的游客,最终成为了一本更传统的城市指南。Abbott选择的照片,尽管有一些删减,但在编辑过程中比McCausland的文字说明保存得更好,后者被出版商改写得面目全非,她的名字被放在了封面内。Sarah M.Miller再现了这一过程的大部分相关初步证据,并对当时活跃在Abbott和McCausland身上的核心思想进行了深入的研究,这有助于更全面地理解《改变的纽约》可能是什么,以及它在美国纪实摄影建设中的作用。Julia Van Haaften和Gary Van Zante的一篇投稿文章还概述了Abbott的档案习惯和她大量材料的来生,以及她与McCausland合作的动态。总的来说,《争议中的纪录片》对改变《改变的纽约》的紧张局势给予了显著而详细的关注,但它是否提供了“原稿”,以及这个术语在多大程度上适用于本案,仍存在争议。在巴黎呆了八年后,贝雷尼斯·阿博特于1929年回到美国,她将自己的摄影实践从肖像画重新定位为描绘纽约的城市景观。摩天大楼仿佛在一夜之间萌芽,大萧条的动荡正在深刻影响着这座城市的建筑和生活空间。她1934年在纽约市博物馆的个展展示了她受社会科学和超现实主义启发的方法的独创性,这引起了艺术评论家伊丽莎白·麦考斯兰的注意。当Abbott获得工程进度管理局联邦艺术项目的支持时,她能够将所有的精力投入到她的“改变纽约”项目中,并聘请助理对城市环境中的变化、转变和并置进行摄影调查。1937年在纽约市博物馆举行的第二次展览和即将到来的1939年世界博览会说服了E.P.Dutton与工程进度管理局签订合同,出版Abbott项目的照片。尽管Abbott最初计划将她的作品进度管理局照片与旧照片一起发布,但她被限制在“不断变化的纽约”语料库中,但她现在可以聘请McCausland来撰写标题。他们一起为这本书准备了第一份提案,其中包括一个23页的布局模型,灵感来自电影和现代主义设计。在达顿拒绝后,他们同意了一个更传统的图书概念,并提供了一套100张照片,并附有单独的说明,将顺序留给出版商。这一套就是米勒所定义的“原稿”。然而,Dutton进一步反对McCausland字幕的性质,该字幕将对摄影描绘的教学陈述与对所示地点和建筑的解释性描述相结合。令人沮丧的是,麦考斯兰以一种更中性的风格改写了她的字幕,而出版商则替换了11张照片。这份“中间手稿”再次被拒绝,文字说明完全由雅培的研究人员改写。达顿仍然对文本不满意,他制作了枯燥而描述性的最后字幕。出版商选择的顺序遵循了城市的传统市中心-上城轴线,并删除了三张它认为有争议的照片(哈莱姆区的一座非裔美国人教堂、一座爱尔兰裔美国天主教神父达菲的包裹雕像和一堵破旧的砖墙)。这本书是在世界博览会期间出版的,在对开的页面上布置了标题和照片,并旋转了一些图像,以同一方向显示所有图像,这违背了Abbot的意愿。这本书卖得很好。它受到了好评,并有助于证明印刷全套305篇“不断变化的纽约”评论的合理性
{"title":"Documentary in Dispute: The Original Manuscript of Changing New York by Berenice Abbott and Elizabeth McCausland","authors":"Michel Hardy-Vallée","doi":"10.1080/03087298.2021.1997200","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/03087298.2021.1997200","url":null,"abstract":"Despite its popular and critical success, the photographic book Changing New York as it appeared in 1939 has long been known to have compromised the intentions of photographer Berenice Abbott and writer Elizabeth McCausland because of the imperatives of the publisher, E. P. Dutton. First conceived by the authorial couple as a formally innovative and visually arresting tapestry of text and image about the rapidly transforming metropolis, the volume ultimately sold to the visitors of the New York World’s Fair ended up as a much more conventional guidebook to the city. Abbott’s selection of photographs, despite a number of cuts, survived the editorial process better than did McCausland’s captions, which were rewritten beyond recognition by the publisher, her name relegated to the inside cover. In reproducing most of the relevant primary evidence of this process alongside a perceptive study of the core ideas animating Abbott and McCausland at that time, Sarah M. Miller facilitates a fuller understanding of what Changing New York could have been and its role in the construction of documentary photography in the USA. A contributed essay by Julia Van Haaften and Gary Van Zante also gives an overview of Abbott’s archival habits and the afterlife of her massive trove of materials, as well as insights into the dynamics of her working partnership with McCausland. As a whole, Documentary in Dispute pays remarkable and detailed attention to the tensions that changed Changing New York, but it is debatable whether it delivers ‘the original manuscript’, and to what extent such a term applies to the present case. Upon returning to the USA in 1929 after eight years in Paris, Berenice Abbott reoriented her photographic practice from portraiture to portraying the urban landscape of New York. Skyscrapers sprouting as if overnight and the upheavals of the Great Depression were profoundly affecting the built and lived space of the city. Her 1934 solo exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York showed the originality of her approach inspired by both social sciences and surrealism, which caught the eye of art critic Elizabeth McCausland. When Abbott was granted support from the Federal Arts Project of the Works Progress Administration, she was able to put all her energies into her ‘Changing New York’ project and hire assistants to produce her photographic survey of change, transformation and juxtaposition in the urban environment. A second exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York in 1937 and the approaching 1939 World’s Fair convinced E. P. Dutton to contract with the Works Progress Administration to publish photographs from Abbott’s project. Although she had initially planned to publish her Works Progress Administration photographs alongside older ones, Abbott was restricted to the ‘Changing New York’ corpus, but she was now able to hire McCausland to write the captions. Together, they prepared a first proposal for the book that included a twenty-three-page","PeriodicalId":13024,"journal":{"name":"History of Photography","volume":"45 1","pages":"103 - 105"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46226360","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-01-02DOI: 10.1080/03087298.2021.2004018
Max Bonhomme
Intended to promote the success of rapid industrialisation, especially at the time of the first Five-Year Plan (1928–32), Soviet photography was disseminated to other countries through the networks of the Communist International. The circulation of Soviet photographs in the press helped define a specifically communist visual culture, characterised by idiosyncratic visual tropes and graphic treatment of images through photomontage and dynamic page layout. This article highlights the role of graphic designers and illustrators in the development of political photomontage in France, particularly through periodicals associated with the Communist Party such as Regards and the Almanach ouvrier et paysan. These illustrated publications often borrowed their iconography and innovative page layout directly from Soviet magazines such as USSR in Construction. By showing how images have been appropriated and transformed, I suggest that communist editors in the early 1930s encouraged a type of militant participation that challenged individual authorship.
为了促进快速工业化的成功,特别是在第一个五年计划(1928-32)期间,苏联摄影通过共产国际的网络传播到其他国家。苏联照片在新闻界的传播帮助定义了一种特殊的共产主义视觉文化,其特点是独特的视觉修辞和通过蒙太奇和动态页面布局对图像进行图形处理。本文强调了平面设计师和插画师在法国政治蒙太奇发展中的作用,特别是通过与共产党有关的期刊,如Regards和Almanach ouvrier et paysan。这些插图出版物经常借用他们的图像和创新的页面布局直接从苏联杂志,如苏联在建设。通过展示图像是如何被挪用和转化的,我认为,20世纪30年代早期的共产主义编辑鼓励了一种挑战个人作者身份的激进参与。
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Pub Date : 2021-01-02DOI: 10.1080/03087298.2021.2010371
K. Fogle
Focusing on the output of Elizabeth Howe Bliss, a Progressive Era travelling social worker, this article explores the snapshots Bliss made in New York City, Oklahoma and France. Although circulated in her own time, Bliss’s images and their publication history have only recently been rediscovered. They deserve further analysis as they illuminate the practices of women using photography personally and professionally during the early decades of the twentieth century, and for their value to researchers of photographic history and beyond. This article argues for the importance of recirculating Bliss’s snapshots – as well as other forms of vernacular imagery – through the digital dissemination made possible by platforming these photographic materials online within virtual spaces, and considers the specifics of one such platform, the Smithsonian Learning Lab.
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Pub Date : 2021-01-02DOI: 10.1080/03087298.2021.1993621
A. Cross
This article explores the circulation of photographs of prisoners of war that were taken at the US General Hospital in Annapolis, Maryland in 1864. More specifically, it considers the publication of these images as wood engravings in Harper’s Weekly’s illustrated newspaper as part of a broader network of photographic circulation, and the circulation of images of atrocity during the American Civil War. This project follows recent interventions in photographic history that have emphasised reproduction and circulation, and that have decentred the photographic print as the primary site for the production of meaning. By examining the multiple visual and narrative contexts in which photographs of the Annapolis prisoners appeared, including as wood engravings in Harper’s Weekly, this article reveals how divergent meanings were ascribed to the images, as both the press and the public sought to make sense of the prisoners’ deterioration and to use their images for political purposes. Ultimately, the article employs circulation as a methodology to understand how audiences used photographs to make sense of the seemingly ineffable trauma and devastation of the American Civil War. This project also demonstrates how Harper’s Weekly relied upon an existing public archive – of text and images, particularly cartes de visite – to report the news and to further its rhetorical position. It is important to highlight that the images in this article are disturbing. They show men in states of significant emaciation and were presumably taken without full consent. These pictures are shown as part of an effort to understand the ways in which images of atrocity were circulated in the nineteenth century, and, as such, requires that we consider the appropriateness of publishing and exhibiting such images both then and now. A question of care and of an ethics of looking must be at the forefront of this critical engagement.
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Pub Date : 2021-01-02DOI: 10.1080/03087298.2021.1989904
Matthias Gründig
Paper photography and paper money share a common history, especially in the context of the USA in the 1860s, a commonality explored by this article. The interconnection of the two media was first addressed by Oliver Wendell Holmes’s metaphorical description of cartes de visite as ‘sentimental “green-backs” of civilization’. This article focuses on Abraham Lincoln’s public image as presidential candidate, one that was heavily influenced by the new craze for cartes de visite. At the same time, the advent of modern paper money as we know it is marked by the introduction of Demand Notes or so-called greenbacks, of which the ten-dollar denomination showed Lincoln’s portrait after a photograph. Medial intersections between paper money and photography are taken into consideration in more theoretical terms, before a concluding section sets out the wider context of photography’s involvement in the emergence and early turbulences of early national paper currencies in the Civil War era.
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Pub Date : 2021-01-02DOI: 10.1080/03087298.2021.2020461
M. Pelizzari, Steffen Siegel
Among the most astonishing documents of photography’s formative period is a short letter written by Laura Mundy on 12 December 1834. In just a few words, she thanked her cousin William Henry Fox Talbot ‘for sending me such beautiful shadows’. As the letter continues, it becomes apparent that Talbot had been sending her the first samples of his ‘Photogenic Drawings’ for several months; however, these ‘shadowy’ pictures were so sensitive to light that it was time to replace them with fresh specimens: ‘I had grieved’, remarks Laura Mundy, ‘over the gradual disappearance of those you gave me in the summer & am delighted to have these to supply their place in my book’. This letter represents not only an early testimony of Talbot’s experiments with photographic technologies; quite incidentally, it also states that he made the results of this research the subject of a postal mailing. Yet it was not Talbot who was the first to go public with the results of his photographic research. This step was taken by the Frenchman Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre when he presented the daguerreotype process. No textbook on the medium’s history would miss telling the events from Paris in 1839. However, it is less well known that Daguerre prepared small packages for a remarkably exclusive circle of addressees in the summer of that year. The Tsar of Russia, the Emperor in Vienna and the Kings of Bavaria and Belgium counted among them – but not, incidentally, the Queen of England, who refused such a gift. But it is more important to note that Daguerre, like Talbot, also made arrangements to use selected samples of his photographic process as objects of postal consignment. In this way, they were very quickly present in important cities of the European continent; and soon after they were on display, for instance in Vienna and Munich. These two anecdotes from photography’s early days may help to illustrate that photographic images were always conceived as mobile media – regardless of their specific material qualities. With photographic imagery, visual communication gained another important instrument that was especially suitable for use over great distances. And again, the often-quoted comparison with painting is also misleading, especially when we consider modes of circulation. If anything, the distribution of photographic images initially borrows from the established graphic arts. Soon, however, the pictorial practices associated with photographs will form specific forms of transmission, circulation and handling. Thus, circulation and mobility are modalities as old as photography. Yet we are still missing a history that discusses these acts of transmission as the critical framework for creating photographic meaning. Jennifer L. Roberts, in her brilliant study of early American art, has suggested a new methodological direction that places agency on the artworks rather than on their makers. In her pursuit of a new kind of spatial and cultural trajectory of art she studies ‘what
摄影形成时期最令人惊讶的文献之一是劳拉·蒙迪于1834年12月12日写的一封短信。在短短的几句话中,她感谢她的堂兄威廉·亨利·福克斯·塔尔博特“给我带来了如此美丽的阴影”。随着这封信的继续,很明显,塔尔博特几个月来一直在给她寄他的“上镜画”的第一批样本;然而,这些“模糊”的照片对光线非常敏感,是时候用新的标本代替它们了:“我很难过”,Laura Mundy说道,“你在夏天送给我的那些照片逐渐消失了,我很高兴这些照片能在我的书中占据一席之地”。这封信不仅是塔尔博特摄影技术实验的早期见证;顺便说一句,它还指出,他将这项研究的结果作为邮寄邮件的主题。然而,塔尔博特并不是第一个公开其摄影研究结果的人。这一步骤是法国人路易斯·雅克·曼德·达盖尔在介绍银版印刷工艺时采取的。没有一本关于媒体历史的教科书会错过讲述1839年巴黎发生的事件。然而,鲜为人知的是,达盖尔在当年夏天为一个非常排外的收件人圈子准备了小包裹。俄罗斯的沙皇、维也纳的皇帝、巴伐利亚和比利时的国王都在其中——但顺便说一句,英国女王拒绝了这样的礼物。但更重要的是,达盖尔和塔尔博特一样,也安排将其摄影过程中的精选样本用作邮寄物品。通过这种方式,他们很快就出现在欧洲大陆的重要城市;不久之后,它们在维也纳和慕尼黑展出。摄影早期的这两个轶事可能有助于说明,摄影图像总是被认为是移动媒体——无论其具体的材料质量如何。有了摄影图像,视觉交流获得了另一种特别适合远距离使用的重要工具。同样,经常被引用的与绘画的比较也是误导性的,尤其是当我们考虑流通模式时。如果说有什么不同的话,那就是摄影图像的分布最初借鉴了已有的平面艺术。然而,很快,与照片相关的绘画实践将形成特定的传播、传播和处理形式。因此,流通和流动与摄影一样古老。然而,我们仍然错过了一部将这些传播行为作为创造摄影意义的关键框架的历史。詹妮弗·罗伯茨(Jennifer L.Roberts)在她对早期美国艺术的杰出研究中,提出了一个新的方法论方向,将代理权放在艺术品上,而不是放在它们的制作者身上。在追求一种新的艺术空间和文化轨迹的过程中,她研究了“当作品本身充当使者时会发生什么”——1834年12月12日,Laura Mundy致William Henry Fox Talbot,文件编号3017,可在http://foxtalbot.dmu.ac.uk/letters/;参见《首次曝光:摄影之初的写作》,斯特芬·西格尔主编,洛杉矶:盖蒂2017,22。
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