Photography and Other Media in the Nineteenth Century

Nicoletta Leonardi, Simone Natale, Nicoletta Leonardi, Simone Natale

• Publisher: Penn State University Press
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9780271079165
• eBook ISBN: 9780271082547
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: History of Modern Art

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.

Table of contents

• COVER Front
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Notes to Introduction
• Chapter 1: Elephans Photographicus: Media Archaeology and the History of Photography
• Notes to Chapter 1
• Chapter 2: A Mirror with Wings: Photography and the New Era of Communications
• Notes to Chapter 2
• Chapter 3: The Traveling Daguerreotype: Early Photography and the U.S. Postal System
• Notes to Chapter 3
• Chapter 4: The Telegraph of the Past: Nadar and the Time of Photography
• Notes to Chapter 4
• 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
• Notes to Chapter 5
• Chapter 6: Peer Production in the Age of Collodion: The Bromide Patent and the Photographic Press, 1854-1868
• Notes to Chapter 6
• Chapter 7: Two or Three Things Photography Did to Painting
• Notes to Chapter 7
• Chapter 8: Uniqueness Multiplied: The Daguerreotype and the Visual Economy of the Graphic Arts
• Notes to Chapter 8
• Chapter 9: Photographs in Text: The Reproduction of Photographs in Nineteenth-Century Scientific Communication
• Notes to Chapter 9
• Chapter 10: In the Time of Balzac: The Daguerreotype and the Discovery/Invention of Society
• Notes to Chapter 10
• Chapter 11: Sound Photography
• Notes to Chapter 11
• Chapter 12: Photography, Cinema, and Perceptual Realism in the Nineteenth Century
• Notes to Chapter 12
• Chapter 13: The Double-Birth Model Tested Against Photography
• Notes to Chapter 13
• Afterword: Media History and History of Photography in Parallel Lines
• Note to Afterword
• Bibliography
• Contributors
• Index