Photography and its Critics: A Cultural History, 1839–1900

by Mary Warner Marien

• ISBN13: 9780521550437
• ISBN10: 0521550432
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1997-05-13
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

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. The earliest criticism of the invention was informed by an ample legacy of notions about objectivity, appearances, and copying. Received ideas about neutral vision, intuitive genius, and progress in art also shaped nineteenth-century understanding of photography as did its technological advances. 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.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	vii	(4)
Preface: Photography Is the Modern World	xi
1 THE ORIGINS OF PHOTOGRAPHIC DISCOURSE	1	(46)
And Then Came Daguerre	1	(1)
Spontaneous Reproduction: Nature and the Natural as Explanation in Photography	2	(19)
The Machine for Making Pictures	21	(5)
Thomas Wedgwood and the Prehistory of Photography: Defining the Missing Link	26	(4)
The Politics of Knowledge: The Disclosure of Photography	30	(6)
The Longue Duree	36	(3)
The Copy, the Facsimile, the Simulacra	39	(3)
Multiples	42	(3)
Conclusion	45	(2)
2 PHOTOGRAPHY AND THE MODERN IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY THOUGHT	47	(37)
Photographic History as Modernist Myth	47	(5)
Photography and Technological Change	52	(5)
Progress in Science/Progress in Art	57	(4)
Photography and Progress	61	(5)
Photography, For and Against	66	(7)
Democratic Art	73	(2)
The Ordinary Photograph	75	(7)
Conclusion	82	(2)
3 ART, PHOTOGRAPHY, AND SOCIETY	84	(28)
Introduction	84	(2)
High Art Photography	86	(5)
Genius and the Science of Sacrifice	91	(5)
The Photograph as Painting	96	(5)
In Relation to the Arts	101	(5)
Post-Photography and the Pre-Raphaelite Movement	106	(2)
Art, Photography, and Society: An Uneasy Truce	108	(3)
Conclusion	111	(1)
4 FORCED TO BE FREE: PHOTOGRAPHY, LITERACY, AND MASS CULTURE	112	(29)
Introduction	112	(2)
Literacy: An Overview	114	(2)
The Educational Revolution	116	(2)
A Vast Picture Gallery	118	(7)
"People Will Form Collections of All Kinds"	125	(4)
Fact, Fact, Fact	129	(3)
The Intellectual Meritocracy	132	(2)
"In Severe Characters of Black and White"	134	(2)
The Mind World	136	(3)
Conclusion	139	(2)
5 THE LURE OF MODERNITY	141	(28)
Introduction	141	(3)
Emerson: An Overview	144	(1)
Science and Art	145	(3)
Photography after Metaphysics	148	(3)
Positivism, Evolution, Culture, and Photography	151	(6)
Degeneration	157	(2)
English Impressions of Impressionism	159	(2)
"And We Are the New Men"	161	(2)
An Elegiac Modernism: Some Conclusions	163	(6)
EPILOGUE: GHOSTS - PHOTOGRAPHY AND THE MODERN	169	(4)
Notes	173	(40)
Bibliographic Survey	213	(6)
Index	219