Seizing the Light

by Hirsch, Robert

• ISBN13: 9780697143617
• ISBN10: 0697143619
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1999-10-22
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill Humanities/Social Sciences/Languages

Summary

"Its chief virtues are a succinct, mostly lucid style, a wide intellectual scope, a flood of ideas and insights at every turn, sensitivity to the technology and culture of photography, and a willingness to attend to images . . . In the end, perhaps the best measure of a text is whether or not one would choose it from among all the offerings to use in class. I have chosen to use this book." - Photo Review, Spring 2000"An excellent introductory history book." - Afterimage: The Journal of Media Arts and Cultural CriticismIn this wonderful and entertaining book, Hirsch has produced the most useful, readable, and practical successor to Newhall. Seizing the Light is written in a friendly, accessible way -- dense with information, but more hip and lively than other offerings, especially those aimed at college students." - exposure: The research journal of the Society for Photographic Education. Vol. 32.2 (Fall, 1999)Hirsch's prose is very digestible. He writes in a clear, lively style with a minimum of jargon." - Views: the newsletter of the Visual Material Section of the Society of American ArchivistsScience, culture, and art come together in this comprehensive history of photography. With superlative production values, rare and unusual prints, and a fresh perspective, Robert Hirsch has written the ideal companion to the first 200 years of photography.

Author Biography

Robert J. Hirsch (Buffalo, NY) is the Associate Director of Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, NY and co-director of Visual Studies Workshop Graduate Program. He is also Associate Professor of Art a SUNY/Brockport. Until June of 1999, he was the Director for Photographic Arts (CEPA Gallery), Rochester, NY.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Advancing towards Photography: The Birth of Modernity

A Desire for Visual Representation

Perspective

Thinking of Photography

Camera Vision

The Demand for Picture-Making Systems

Proto-Photographers: Chemical Action of Light

Modernity: New Visual Realities

Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre

Optical Devices

Images through Light: A Struggle for Permanence

Joseph Nicephore Niépce

John Herschel

William Henry Fox Talbot

Anna Atkins

Other Distinct Originators

Hippolyte Bayard

Mungo Ponton

Hercules Florence

Chapter 2: The Daguerreotype: Image and Object

What is a Daguerreotype?

Samuel Morse

The Daguerreotype Comes to America

The Early Practitioners

Early Daguerreian Portrait Making

Post-Mortem Portraits

Technical Improvements

Expanding U.S. Portrait Studios

Albert Sands Southworth

Josiah Johnson Hawes

Matthew Brady

The Art of the Daguerreian Portrait

Daguerreian Portrait Galleries and Picture Factories

African-American Operators

Rural Practice

The Daguerreotype and the Landscape

The Daguerreotype and Science

John Whipple

Chapter 3: Calotype Rising: The Arrival of Photography

The Calotype

Early Calotype Activity

David Octavius Hill

Robert Adamson

William Newton

Thomas Keith

Calotypists Establish a Practice

Louis Désiré Blanquart-Evrard

Thomas Sutton

Gustave le Gray

Charles Nègre

Calotype and Architecture: Mission Héliographique

Jean Louis Henri le Secq

Edouard Denis Baldus

Charles Marville

The End of the Calotype and the Future of Photography

Chapter 4: Pictures on Glass: The Wet-Plate Process

The Albumen Process

Frederick Scott Archer

The New Transparent Look

The Ambrotype

Pictures on Tin

The Carte-de-Visite and the Photo Album

André Disdéri

John Mayall

The Cabinet Photograph: The Picture Gets Bigger

The Studio Tradition

Nadar

Camille Silvy

Antoine Samuel Adam-Salomon

Napoleon Sarony

Retouching and Enlargements

The Stereo Craze

Oliver Wendell Holmes

Chapter 5: Prevailing Events/Picturing Calamity

Current Events

Early War Coverage

Roger Fenton

James Robertson

Felice Beato

The American Civil War

Matthew Brady

Alexander Gardner

Timothy O’Sullivan

George Barnard

Andrew Russell

How Photographs Were Circulated

Chapter 6: A New Medium of Communication: Art or Industry?

Lady Elizabeth Eastlake

Discovering a Photographic Language

Lewis Carroll

Oscar Gustave Rejlander

Henry Peach Robinson

Julia Margaret Cameron

Americans and the Art of Nature Positivism

Hugh Welch Diamond

Thomas Barnardo

Chapter 7: Standardizing the Practice: A Transparent Truth

Mechanical Photography

The Traveling Camera

Maxime Du Camp

John B. Green

Auguste Salzmann

John Shaw Smith

Francis Frith

Robert MacPherson

Fratelli Alinari

Bisson Brothers

Picturing Industrialization

Phillip Delamotte

Robert Howlett

Joseph Cundall

Edouard Baldus

Camille Silvy

Samuel Bourne

Urban Life

John Thomson

Thomas Annan

The Other

The American West: The Narrative and the Sublime

Carleton E. Watkins

Timothy O’Sullivan

William Henry Jackson

Eadweard Muybridge

Chapter 8: New Ways of Visualizing Time and Space

The Inadequacy of Human Vision

Locomotion

Thomas Eakins

Etienne-Jules Marey

Ottomar Anschütz

Transforming Aesthetics: Technical Breakthroughs

The Hand Held Camera and the Snapshot

Time and Motion as an Extended Continuum

Moving Pictures

Color

Chapter 9: Suggesting the Subject: The Evolution of Pictorialism

Roots of Pictorialism

Pictorialism and Naturalism

Peter Henry Emerson

The Development of Pictorial Effect

George Davison

The Secession Movement and the Rise of Photography Clubs

The Aesthetic Club Movement

Working Pictorially: A Variety of Approaches

Robert Demachy

Heinrich Keuhn

Frederick Evans

Pierre Dubreuil

American Perspectives

Alfred Stieglitz

The Photo-Secession

The Decadent Movement and Tonalism

Frederick Holland Day

Alvin Langdon Coburn

Women Pictorialists

Gertrude Käsebier

Alice Boughton

The Pictorial Epoch/The Stieglitz Group

Edward Steichen

Adolf de Meyer

Frank Eugene

Clarence Hudson White

The Decline of Pictorialism

Chapter 10: Modernism: Industrial Beauty

Modernism

Cubism

High and Low Art

Futurism

Anton Giulio Bragaglia

Arturo Bragaglia

Time, Movement, and the Machine

Frank B. Gilbreth

Lillian M. Gilbreth

Towards a Modern Practice: Distilling Form

Alvin Coburn

Paul Strand

Dada

Exploring Space and Time: The Return of the Photogram

Man Ray

László Moholy-Nagy

Surrealism

Collage

Max Ernst

Raoul Hausmann

John Heartfield

Hannah Höch

Suprematism

Aleksandr Rodchenko

Art, Technology, and a New Faith

Bauhaus

Morton Schamberg

Charles Sheeler

Paul Strand and Straight Photography: Purity of Use

Chapter 11: The New Culture of Light

Teaching Modernism: The American Impulse

Paul Outerbridge

Margaret Bourke-White

Stieglitz’s “Equivalents”

Steichen Goes Commercial

Form as Essence

Edward Weston

Straight, Modernistic Photography

Group f/64

Ansel Adams

Imogen Cunningham

William Mortensen

Film und Foto & New Objectivity

Albert Renger-Patzsch

Karl Blossfeldt

Jean Eugène Auguste Atget

Experimentally Modern

New Vision

Florence Henri

Gyorgy Kepes

Pathways of Light: Time, Space, and Form

Barbara Morgan

František Drtikol

Francis Joseph Bruguière

Surrealistic Themes

Hans Bellmer

Georges Hugnet

Man Ray

Raoul Ubac

Chapter 12: Social Documents

An American Urge: Social Uplift

Jacob Riis

Lewis Hine

Ethnological Approaches

Adam Vroman

Edward Curtis

Francis Benjamin Johnston

E.J. Bellocq

Tina Modotti

Emerging Ethnic Consciousness

Horace Poolaw

James Van Der Zee

Eudora Welty

The Physiognomic Approach

August Sander

The Great Depression: The Economics of Photography

Dorthea Lange

Walker Evans

Arthur Rothstein

Russell Lee

Ben Shahn

Gordon Parks

Marion Post Wolcott

The FAP Project: Changing New York

Bernice Abbott

Mass Observation

Mass Observation

The Film and Photo League

Sid Grossman

Aaron Siskind

Chapter 13: Nabbing Time: Anticipating the Moment

Realizing a Moment

Jacques-Henri Lartigue

Erich Salomon

André Kertész

Brassaï

Henri Cartier-Bresson

Bill Brandt

Manuel Alvarez Bravo

Lisette Model

Helen Levitt

Wright Morris

Harold Edgerton

Chapter 14: Photography and the Halftone

Pictures and Printers Ink

The Photo Magazine

John Heartfield

The Separation of Art and Commerce: Advertising and Fashion

Lejaren à Hiller

Nickolas Muray

Cecil Beaton

Horst P. Horst

Martin Munkacsi

Alexey Brodovitch

Irving Penn

Richard Avedon

Philippe Halsman

Yousuf Karsh

Arnold Newman

Newspapers

Weegee

War Reportage

Robert Capa

William Eugene Smith

Cornell Capa

Don McCullin

Larry Burrows

Eddie Adams

The New Subjective Journalism

Mary Ellen Mark

Sebastião Salgado

Bytes and Halftones

Chapter 15: The Atomic Age

Ansel Adams

The Surrealistic Metaphor

Clarence John Laughlin

Frederick Sommer

Val Telberg

The Photograph as Spirit

Minor White

Photo Education as Self-Expression

Harry Callahan

Aaron Siskind

Fotoform

Family of Man

Photography and Alienation

Robert Frank

William Klein

Mario Giacomelli

Making a Big Jump

Henry Holmes Smith

Richard Hamilton

Wallace Berman

The Subjective Documentary

Robert Doisneau

Roy DeCarava

Eliot Porter

The Terror of Riches

Chapter 16: New Frontiers: Expanding Boundaries

Structuralism: Reading a Photograph

The Found Image: The Beginnings of Postmodernism

Robert Rauschenberg

The Rise of Pop Art

William Burroughs

Andy Warhol

Marshall McLuhan

Challenging the Code

Art Sinsabaugh

Syl Labrot

The Social Landscape

Garry Winogrand

Lee Friedlander

Diane Arbus

New Journalism

Bruce Davidson

Danny Lyon

Multiple Points of View

Duane Michals

Nathan Lyons

Ray Metzker

Jerry Uelsmann

Robert Heinecken

The Rapid Growth of Photographic Education

Chapter 17: Changing Realities

Alternative Visions

Robert Fichter

Sonia Landy Sheridan

Thomas Barrow

William Larson

Turning the Straight Photograph on Itself

Ken Josephson

Joseph Jachna

Barbara Crane

Personal Accounts: Documentary Fiction

Ralph Eugene Meatyard

Les Krims

Lucas Samaras

Ralph Gibson

Larry Clark

Michael Lesy

Eugene Richards

The Snapshot

Emmet Gowin

Judy Dater

Bill Owens

Post-Structuralism/New Topographics

Edward Ruscha

Lewis Baltz

Robert Adams

The Rephotographic Survey Project/Time Changes

Color Rising

William Eggleston

Joel Meyerowitz

Artists’ Books

Reconfiguring Information

Ruth Thorne-Thomsen

Critical Writing

Chapter 18: Thinking about Photography

Conceptual Art: The Act of Choosing

Nam June Paik

John Baldessari

Performance Art

Bruce Nauman

Arnulf Rainer

Anselm Keifer

Gilbert and George

William Wegman

A Return to Typologies

Bernhard and Hilla Becher

Robert Cumming

Postmodernism

Bart Parker

Paul Berger

MANUAL

Deconstructing Myths

Richard Prince

Sherrie Levine

Michael Mandel and Larry Sultan

Barbara Kruger

Victor Burgin

Gender Issues

Judith Golden

Cindy Sherman

Eileen Cowin

Laurie Simmons

Fabrication

James Casebere

Sandy Skoglund

Olivia Parker

Joel-Peter Witkin

Patrick Nagatani and Andrée Tracey

Altering Time and Space

Jan Dibbets

Eve Sonneman

Lew Thomas

Hollis Frampton and Marion Faller

Mike Mandell

Barbara Kasten

David Hockney

Michael Spano

Holly Roberts

Doug and Mike Starn

Investigating the Body

Andres Serrano

Robert Mapplethorpe

John Coplans

David Wojnarowicz

Nan Goldin

Sally Mann

Multiculturalism: Exploring Identity

Dinh Q. Lê

Jeffrey Henson Scales

Stephen Marc

Guerrilla Girls

Jo Spence

Terry Dennett

Annette Messager

Jolene Rickard

Clarissa Sligh

Carrie Mae Weems

Lorna Simpson

Krzystof Wodiczko

The Digital Future

Nancy Burson

Tyrone Georgiou

Pedro Meyer

Philip Lorca diCorcia

Jeff Wall