In this volume, leading scholars of photography and media examine photography’s vital role in the evolution of media and communication in the nineteenth century. In the first half of the nineteenth century, the introduction of telegraphy, the development of a cheaper and more reliable postal service, the rise of the mass-circulation press, and the emergence of the railway dramatically changed the way people communicated and experienced time and space. Concurrently, photography developed as a medium that changed how images were produced and circulated. Yet, for the most part, photography of the era is studied outside the field of media history. The contributors to this volume challenge those established disciplinary boundaries as they programmatically explore the intersections of photography and “new media” during a period of fast-paced change. Their essays look at the emergence and early history of photography in the context of broader changes in the history of communications; the role of the nascent photographic press in photography’s infancy; and the development of photographic techniques as part of a broader media culture that included the mass-consumed novel, sound recording, and cinema. Featuring essays by noteworthy historians in photography and media history, this discipline-shifting examination of the communication revolution of the nineteenth century is an essential addition to the field of media studies. In addition to the editors, contributors to this volume are Geoffrey Batchen, Geoffrey Belknap, Lynn Berger, Jan von Brevern, Anthony Enns, André Gaudreault, Lisa Gitelman, David Henkin, Erkki Huhtamo, Philippe Marion, Peppino Ortoleva, Steffen Siegel, Richard Taws, and Kim Timby.
Author(s): Nicoletta Leonardi, Simone Natale
Publisher: The Pennsylvania State University Press
Year: 2018
Language: English
Pages: 251
Tags: Photography, Media, Nineteenth Century
COVER Front......Page 1
Copyright Page......Page 5
Table of Contents......Page 6
List of Illustrations......Page 8
Acknowledgments......Page 10
Introduction......Page 12
Notes to Introduction......Page 20
Chapter 1: Elephans Photographicus: Media Archaeology and the History of Photography......Page 24
Notes to Chapter 1......Page 41
Chapter 2: A Mirror with Wings: Photography and the New Era of Communications......Page 45
Notes to Chapter 2......Page 56
Chapter 3: The Traveling Daguerreotype: Early Photography and the U.S. Postal System......Page 58
Notes to Chapter 3......Page 67
Chapter 4: The Telegraph of the Past: Nadar and the Time of Photography......Page 68
Notes to Chapter 4......Page 82
Chapter 5: With Eyes of Flesh and Glass Eyes: Railroad Image-Objects and Fantasies of Human-Machine Hybridizations in the Mid-Nineteenth-Century United States......Page 83
Notes to Chapter 5......Page 98
Chapter 6: Peer Production in the Age of Collodion: The Bromide Patent and the Photographic Press, 1854-1868......Page 102
Notes to Chapter 6......Page 112
Chapter 7: Two or Three Things Photography Did to Painting......Page 114
Notes to Chapter 7......Page 125
Chapter 8: Uniqueness Multiplied: The Daguerreotype and the Visual Economy of the Graphic Arts......Page 127
Notes to Chapter 8......Page 140
Chapter 9: Photographs in Text: The Reproduction of Photographs in Nineteenth-Century Scientific Communication......Page 142
Notes to Chapter 9......Page 156
Chapter 10: In the Time of Balzac: The Daguerreotype and the Discovery/Invention of Society......Page 160
Notes to Chapter 10......Page 171
Chapter 11: Sound Photography......Page 173
Notes to Chapter 11......Page 185
Chapter 12: Photography, Cinema, and Perceptual Realism in the Nineteenth Century......Page 187
Notes to Chapter 12......Page 200
Chapter 13: The Double-Birth Model Tested Against Photography......Page 202
Notes to Chapter 13......Page 214
Afterword: Media History and History of Photography in Parallel Lines......Page 216
Note to Afterword......Page 223
Bibliography......Page 224
Contributors......Page 246
Index......Page 247
