Making Photography Matter: A Viewer's History from the Civil

Making Photography Matter: A Viewer's History from the Civil War to the Great Depression

Photography became a dominant medium in cultural life starting in the late nineteenth century. As it happened, viewers increasingly used their reactions to photographs to comment on and debate public issues as vital as war, national identity, and citizenship.
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Cara A. Finnegan analyzes a wealth of newspaper and magazine articles, letters to the editor, trial testimony, books, and speeches produced by viewers in response to specific photos they encountered in public. From the portrait of a young Lincoln to images of child laborers and Depression-era hardship, Finnegan treats the photograph as a locus for viewer engagement and constructs a history of photography's viewers that shows how Americans used words about images to participate in the politics of their day. As she shows, encounters with photography helped viewers negotiate the emergent anxieties and crises of U.S. public life through not only persuasion but action, as well.
Country USA
Brand University of Illinois Press
Manufacturer University of Illinois Press
Binding Hardcover
ItemPartNumber Illustrated
UnitCount 1
Format Illustrated
EANs 9780252039263
ReleaseDate 0000-00-00

Country	USA
Brand	University of Illinois Press
Manufacturer	University of Illinois Press
Binding	Hardcover
ItemPartNumber	Illustrated
UnitCount	1
Format	Illustrated
EANs	9780252039263
ReleaseDate	0000-00-00

Making Photography Matter: A Viewer's History from the Civil War to the Great Depression