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9780252039263 Academic Inspection Copy

Making Photography Matter

A Viewer's History from the Civil War to the Great Depression
  • ISBN-13: 9780252039263
  • Publisher: UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS PRESS
    Imprint: UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS PRESS
  • By Cara A. Finnegan
  • Price: AUD $239.00
  • Stock: 0 in stock
  • Availability: This book is temporarily out of stock, order will be despatched as soon as fresh stock is received.
  • Local release date: 14/07/2015
  • Format: Hardback 256 pages Weight: 0g
  • Categories: Photography & photographs [AJ]
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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. Cara A. Finnegan analyses 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 labourers 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.
''The author uses plain language and homey metaphors to excellent effect. A solid and enticing piece of scholarly writing.'' --David M. Lubin, author of ''Shooting Kennedy: JFK and the Culture of Images''
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