Considers five documentary sequences or narratives: the antebellum portraits of Mathew Brady and others; the Civil War albums of Alexander Gardner, George Barnard and A.J. Russell; the Western survey and landscape photographs of Timothy O'Sullivan, A.J. Russell, and Carleton Watkins; and social photographs and texts by Alfred Stieglitz and Lewis Hine; as well as documentaries inspired by the Depression, esp. Walker Evans's American Photographs.

Considers five documentary sequences or narratives: the antebellum portraits of Mathew Brady and others; the Civil War albums of Alexander Gardner, George Barnard and A.J. Russell; the Western survey and landscape photographs of Timothy O'Sullivan, A.J. Russell, and Carleton Watkins; and social photographs and texts by Alfred Stieglitz and Lewis Hine; as well as documentaries inspired by the Depression, esp. Walker Evans's American Photographs.

"This comprehensive new survey places American photography in its cultural context for the first time. Prize-winning author, Miles Orvell, examines this fascinating subject through portraiture and landscape photography, family albums and memory, analyzing the particular way in which American photographers view the world around them - from Alfred Stieglitz to Walker Evans, Andy Warhol to Cindy Sherman."--Back cover.

Demonstrates that the quest for immediacy, or experiences of direct connection and presence, has propelled the development of American literature and media culture.

"This anthology investigates books that juxtapose photographs and written language (photo-texts), considering a variety of examples from America, Britain, Canada, and France. Ranging from Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Marble Faun to Michael Ondaatje's postmodern novel Coming Through Slaughter and Edward Said's postdocumentary After the Last Sky, the contributors' analyses address photo-textuality's implications for representation and its cultural contexts. A truly interdisciplinary collection, Photo-Textualities features contributors who work in literary studies (English, romance languages), as well as contributors who work in media studies (film, graphic arts)." "Photo-Textualities invigorates critical inquiry with its range of literary and photographic genres, including photo-texts that elude genre classification. Besides documentary and biography, nonfiction literary genres include autobiography and travelogue. The range of photographic genres extends to landscapes, portraiture, documentary, tourist snapshots, and media images, as well as to the standard photo-textual forms of published album and photo-essay."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Walker Evans is widely recognized as one of the greatest American photographers of the twentieth century, and the J. Paul Getty Museum owns one of the most comprehensive collections of his work, including more of his vintage prints than any other museum in the world. This lavishly illustrated volume brings together for the first time all of the Museum’s Walker Evans holdings. Included here are familiar images—such as Evans’s photographs of tenant farmers and their families, made in the 1930s and later published in Let Us Now Praise Famous Men—and images that are much less familiar—such as the photographs Evans made in the 1940s of the winter quarters of the Ringling Brothers circus, or his very late Polaroids, made in the 1970s. In addition, many previously unpublished Evans photographs, and variant croppings of classic images, appear here for the first time. Author Judith Keller has written a lively, informative text that places these photographs in the larger context of Evans’s life and career and the culture—especially the popular culture—of the time. In so doing, she has produced an indispensible volume for anyone interested in the history of photography or American culture in the twentieth century. Also included is the most comprehensive bibliography on Walker Evans published to date.

James William Newland’s (1810–1857) career as a showman daguerreotypist began in the United States but expanded into Central and South America, across the Pacific to New Zealand and colonial Australia and onto India. Newland used the latest developments in photography, theatre and spectacle to create powerful new visual experiences for audiences in each of these volatile colonial societies. This book assesses his surviving, vivid portraits against other visual ephemera and archival records of his time. Newland’s magic lantern and theatre shows are imaginatively reconstructed from textual sources and analysed, with his short, rich career casting a new light on the complex worlds of the mid-nineteenth century. It provides a revealing case study of someone brokering new experiences with optical technologies for varied audiences at the forefront of the age of modern vision. This book will be of interest to scholars in art and visual culture, photography, the history of photography and Victorian history.

This beautiful and informative photographic history includes images from 1900 to 1999. Many are often seen (bullet piercing the apple, splashing crown of milk, Sophia Loren looking askance at Jayne Mansfield's plunging decollete, and Dorothea Lange's Migrant Mother); but most are probably unknown, because the photos were selected not only for their visual and cognitive qualities but also for their importance to the history and development of photographic technique and usage. The century is divided into thirds for explanation's sake, and there is at least one photograph for every year. While this is a picture book, the accompanying text provides informative introductions to the uses and abuses of perhaps the century's most important medium. The book is companion to the PBS series. Oversize: 12.5x9.5". Annotation copyrighted by Book News Inc., Portland, OR