Looking Outside the Cathedrals. CAA AnnualConference, New York City, 11–14 February 2015 (original) (raw)
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Photography and Other Media in the Nineteenth Century
Penn State University Press, 2018
V isual culture references in the academy have become as pervasive as emojis in texts. Nineteenth-century visual culture in particular is instructive, as it was embedded in a technological explosion comparable to the digital age. Historical photography is a frequently consulted nineteenth-century visual form because the medium was then new, socially dynamic, and uniquely aesthetic. Simultaneous with this trend, the formal canon of fine art photography, determined by major museums like the National Gallery, has expanded to include the "vernacular"-everyday snapshots, anonymous studio portraiture, and family photo albums. The last decade has seen a number of significant projects based on vernacular photographs, including documentary films, history publications, web-based mapping, digital humanities projects, and museum exhibits. As an expanding circle of scholarship from a broadening range of fields taps into the history of photography, intersections with other contemporary media forms also become crucial points of learning. All this makes it a particularly interesting moment to be an archivist or curator at a historical collection with significant photographic holdings. Comparative studies are best done where the critical masses of multiple media are located, often at archives and libraries. How we describe and provide access to our archival materials ideally should anticipate intersecting interests and new research questions. Thus, curators or archivists benefit from staying on top of the current thinking in visual culture. Photography and Other Media in the Nineteenth Century, edited by Nicoletta Leonardi and Simone Natale, provides fresh insights for the expanding potential of archival visual collections. A cast of fourteen writers in media studies, visual culture, and the history of photography join the editors, who coauthor the introduction and outline the volume's themes. Leonardi (PhD,
Rundbrief Fotografie. Analoge und digitale Bildmedien in Archiven und Sammlungen, 2017
The Social Life of Photographs. Review of “Photo-Objects: On the Photo-Archives in the Humanities and Sciences”, International Conference, Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut, 15-17 February 2017, in: Rundbrief Fotografie. Analoge und digitale Bildmedien in Archiven und Sammlungen, vol 24 (2017), no. 3 [N.F. 95], S. 43-51.
"Introduction: The 'Public' Life of Photographs"
The “Public” Life of Photographs, 2016
Thierry Gervais, "Introduction," in The “Public” Life of Photographs, ed. Thierry Gervais (Toronto/Cambridge, MA: Ryerson Image Centre; MIT Press, 2016), 1–13. Do we understand a photograph differently if we encounter it in a newspaper rather than a book? In a photo album as opposed to framed on a museum wall? The “Public” Life of Photographs explores how the various ways that photographs have been made available to the public have influenced their reception. The reproducibility of photography has been the necessary tool in the creation of a mass visual culture. This generously illustrated book explores historical instances of the “public” life of photographic images—tracing the steps from the creation of photographs to their reception. The contributors—international curators and scholars from a range of disciplines—examine the emergence of photography as mass culture: through studios and public spaces; by the press; through editorial strategies promoting popular and vernacular photography; and through the dissemination of photographic images in the art world. The contributing authors discuss such topics as how photographic images became objects of appropriation and collection; the faith in photographic truthfulness; Life magazine’s traveling exhibitions and their effect on the magazine’s “media hegemony”; and the curatorial challenges of making vernacular photographs accessible in an artistic environment. Contributors: Geoffrey Batchen, Nathalie Boulouch, Heather Diack, André Gunthert, Sophie Hackett, Vincent Lavoie, Olivier Lugon, Mary Panzer, Joel Snyder