The Ultimate Spectacle: A Visual History of the Crimean War (Documenting the Image) - Hardcover

Keller, Ulrich

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 9057005697 ISBN 13: 9789057005695

Publisher: Routledge, 2002

Synopsis

Chloroform, telegraphy, steamships and rifles were distinctly modern features of the Crimean War. Covered by a large corps of reporters, illustrators and cameramen, it also became the first media war in history. For the benefit of the ubiquitous artists and correspondents, both the domestic events were carefully staged, giving the Crimean War an aesthetically alluring, even spectacular character.
With their exclusive focus on written sources, historians have consistently overlooked this visual dimension of the Crimean War. Photo-historian Ulrich Keller challenges the traditional literary bias by drawing on a wealth of pictorial materials from scientific diagrams to photographs, press illustration and academic painting. The result is a new and different historical account which emphasizes the careful aesthetic scripting of the war for popular mass consumption at home.

About this title

About the Author:

Ulrich Keller is Professor of Art History, Department of History of Art and Architecture, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA.

Review:

"Thoughtfully conceived, satisfyingly researched...a mapping of the many ways in which the Crimea was produced as a spectacle for Victorian consumption.""
-Jennifer Green Lewis of Middlebury College, Vermont

About this edition

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 9057005697
• ISBN 13: 9789057005695
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320