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274 pages, 28 color photos, 72 duotones, 109 halftones, 1991
$42.50 paper, 0-87745-675-5, 978-0-87745-675-9
"Represents a new celebration of daguerreian art, and, even more emphatically, an episodic record of its social role. The reproduced images, many in color, and each carefully annotated, are superb, and serve to remind us how old certain pictorial conventions really were that turn-of-the-century photographers regarded as their original creations. . . . The book can be safely recommended to photo historians of all interests and inclinations; to daguerreotype lovers it is an absolute must."—History of Photography
"The daguerreotype lives on through John Wood's continued passionate exploration of the earliest of photographic processes. . . . In this [his] second book he successfully attempts to portray a visual picture of America between 1840 and 1860 within a social, economic, and historical context. . . . A fascinating volume, with articulate essays and extraordinary illustrations."—Choice
Now available in paperback, America and the Daguerreotype brings together 200 previously unpublished images (28 in full color) as it examines the earliest photographic process and its effect on the way we view ourselves. For this collection, John Wood selected active images of ordinary Americans living and working: at weddings, river baptisms, band concerts, and political meetings, on farms and in factories.
In the eight essays that accompany the images, leading art, photographic, and social historians provide diverse and perceptive readings of the role the daguerreotype played in shaping America's self-image. Editor John Wood addresses the American portrait, David Stannard writes on sex and death in the daguerreotype, Peter Palmquist reviews the role of daguerreotypes in the settlement of the American West, John Stilgoe discusses landscape and daguerreotypes, Dolores Kilgo offers an alternative aesthetic to daguerreotypes, John Graf focuses on the militia as a social institution depicted visually in nineteenth-century America, Brooks Johnson deals with daguerreian images of Americans at work, and Jeanne Verhulst reveals how modern-day artists have revived the daguerreotype. |
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