Reading American Photographs: Images As History, Mathew Brady to Walker Evans - Softcover

Trachtenberg, Alan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0374522499 ISBN 13: 9780374522490

Publisher: Hill and Wang, 1990

Synopsis

Winner of the Charles C. Eldredge Prize

In this book, Alan Trachtenberg reinterprets some of America's most significant photographs, presenting them not as static images but rather as rich cultural texts suffused with meaning and historical content. Reading American Photographs is lavishly illustrated with the work of such luminaries as Mathew Brady, Timothy O'Sullivan, and Walker Evans--pictures that document the American experience from 1839 to 1938. In an outstanding analysis, Trachtenberg eloquently articulates how the art of photography has both followed and shaped the course of American history, and how images captured decades ago provocatively illuminate the present.

About this title

About the Author:

Alan Trachtenberg, Neil Gray, Jr., Professor of English and American Studies at Yale University, is the author of The Incorporation of America: Culture and Society in the Gilded Age.

From Library Journal:

Trachtenberg's sophisticated discussion finds in American photographs a way of reading the past--"the past as culture, as ways of thinking and feeling, as experience." For this study he considers images originally edited as albums, books, or photo-stories. In such works as Mathew Brady's Gallery of Illustrious Americans, the Civil War albums of Alexander Gardner and George Barnard, Timothy O'Sullivan's Western survey photographs, Lewis Hine's social work projects and texts, and Walker Evans's American Photographs, he sees photographers trying to make sense of their society while seeking to create a role for photography as an American art. This impressive analysis, which employs social, cultural, and political history as well as art criticism, is highly recommended for American studies and photography collections. (Photographs not seen.) --Ann Copeland, Drew Univ. Lib., Madison, N.J.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Hill and Wang
• Publication date: 1990
• ISBN 10: 0374522499
• ISBN 13: 9780374522490
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 352