The camera and the press : American visual and print culture in the age of the daguerreotype / Marcy J. Dinius.

Author
Dinius, Marcy J. [Browse]
Format
Book
Language
English
Εdition
1st ed.
Published/​Created
Philadelphia, Pa. : University of Pennsylvania Press, ©2012.
Description
1 online resource (308 pages) : illustrations

Details

Subject(s)
Series
Material texts [More in this series]
Summary note
"Before most Americans ever saw an actual daguerreotype, they encountered this visual form through written descriptions, published and rapidly reprinted in newspapers throughout the land. In The Camera and the Press, Marcy J. Dinius examines how the first written and published responses to the daguerreotype set the terms for how we now understand the representational accuracy and objectivity associated with the photograph, as well as the democratization of portraiture that photography enabled. Dinius's archival research ranges from essays in popular nineteenth-century periodicals to daguerreotypes of Americans, Liberians, slaves, and even fictional characters. Examples of these portraits are among the dozens of illustrations featured in the book. The Camera and the Press presents new dimensions of Nathaniel Hawthorne's The House of the Seven Gables, Herman Melville's Pierre, Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, and Frederick Douglass's The Heroic Slave. Dinius shows how these authors strategically incorporated aspects of daguerreian representation to advance their aesthetic, political, and social agendas. By recognizing print and visual culture as one, Dinius redefines such terms as art, objectivity, sympathy, representation, race, and nationalism and their interrelations in nineteenth-century America."--Project Muse.
Notes
Originally presented as the author's thesis (Northwestern University) under title: The camera and the pen: daguerreotypy and literature in antebellum America.
Bibliographic references
Includes bibliographical references (pages 279-294) and index.
Source of description
Print version record.
Contents
  • The daguerreotype in Antebellum American popular print
  • Daguerreian romanticism: The house of the seven gables and Gabriel Harrison's portraits
  • "Some ideal image of the man and his mind": Melville's Pierre and Southworth & Hawes's Daguerreian aesthetic
  • Slavery in black and white: daguerreotypy and Uncle Tom's Cabin
  • "My daguerreotype shall be a true one": Augustus Washington and the Liberian colonization movement
  • Seeing a slave as a man: Frederick Douglass, racial progress, and daguerreian portraiture.
Other title(s)
American visual and print culture in the age of the daguerreotype
ISBN
  • 9780812206340 ((electronic bk.))
  • 0812206347 ((electronic bk.))
OCLC
822017912
Doi
  • 10.9783/9780812206340
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