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.
Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction (Nicoletta Leonardi and Simone Natale)
Part I: The Emergence of Modern Communications
1. Elephans Photographicus: Media Archaeology and the History of Photography (Erkki Huhtamo)
2. A Mirror with Wings: Photography and the New Era of Communications (Simone Natale)
3. The Traveling Daguerreotype: Early Photography and the U.S. Postal System (David M. Henkin)
4. The Telegraph of the Past: Nadar and the Time of Photography (Richard Taws)
5. With Eyes of Flesh and Glass Eyes: Railroad Image-Objects and Fantasies of Human-MachineHybridizations in the Mid-Nineteenth-Century United States (Nicoletta Leonardi)
Part II: Technologies of Reproduction
6. Peer Production in the Age of Collodion: The Bromide Patent and the Photographic Press, 1854–1868 (Lynn Berger)
7. Two or Three Things Photography Did to Painting (Jan von Brevern)
8. Uniqueness Multiplied: The Daguerreotype and the Visual Economy of the Graphic Arts (Steffen Siegel)
9. Photographs in Text: The Reproduction of Photographs in Nineteenth-Century Scientific Communication (Geoffrey Belknap)
Part III: Popular Cultures
10. In the Time of Balzac: The Daguerreotype and the Discovery/ Invention of Society (Peppino Ortoleva)
11. Sound Photography (Anthony Enns)
12. Photography, Cinema, and Perceptual Realism in the Nineteenth Century (Kim Timby)
13. The Double-Birth Model Tested Against Photography (Andre Gaudreault and Philippe Marion
Afterword: Media History and History of Photography in Parallel Lines (Geoffrey Batchen and Lisa Gitelman
Bibliography
List of Contributors
Index
“Provides fresh insights for the expanding potential of archival visual collections.”
