Human heads on animal bodies, people in fanciful landscapes, faces that are deftly morphed into common household objects—these are among the Victorian experiments in photocollage seen and explained in this marvelous book. With sharp wit and dramatic shifts of scale, these images flouted the serious conventions of photography in the 1860s and 1870s. Often made by women for albums, they reveal the educated minds and accomplished hands of their makers, taking on the new theory of evolution, addressing the changing role of photography, and challenging the strict conventions of aristocratic society. Although these photocollages may seem wonderfully odd to us now, the authors argue that they are actually perfectly in keeping with the Victorian sensibility that embraced juxtaposition and variety. This delightful book, the first to examine comprehensively the little-known

Playing With Pictures: The Art of Victorian Photocollage

Arts & Photography

Elizabeth Siegel

History & Criticism

Art Institute of Chicago

Galleries of Friendship and Fame is the first comprehensive investigation of the origin, development, and practices of 19th-century American photograph albums. In this fascinating book, the author argues that the album—whether functioning as family record, parlor entertainment, social register, national portrait gallery, or advertisement for photography itself—helped transform the nature of self-presentation at the cusp of modernity. 
This handsome volume examines carte de visite and cabinet card albums from their introduction in the United States in 1861 through the rise of the snapshot at the century’s end. By examining a wealth of previously overlooked primary materials, this study offers a completely new understanding of photograph albums, revealing how they emerged, how they were marketed and sold, and how families displayed and told stories through them. Galleries of Friendship and Fame addresses the history of technology and innovation, the interconnectedness of the commercial and domestic spheres, and the ways photography helped shape notions of identity, family, and nation in a rapidly changing America.

Galleries of Friendship and Fame: A History of Nineteenth-Century American Photograph Albums

History

Yale University Press

A riveting retrospective of the imaginative photographs created by contemporary artist Abelardo Morell Over the past twenty-five years, Abelardo Morell (b. 1948) has earned international praise for his images that use the language of photography to explore visual surprise and wonder. Born in Havana, Cuba, Morell came to the United States as a teenager in 1962 and later studied photography, earning an MFA from Yale University. He gained attention for intimate, black-and-white pictures of domestic objects from a child’s point of view, inspired by the birth of his son in 1986, as well as images in which he turns a room into a giant camera obscura, projecting exterior views onto interior spaces; and photographs of books that revel in their sensory materiality.
In more recent years, he has turned to color, exploring the camera obscura with a painterly delight and innovating a tent camera that projects outdoor scenes onto a textured ground. Across his career, Morell has approached photography with remarkable wit and creativity, examining everyday objects with childlike curiosity. The first in-depth treatment in fifteen years, this handsome and important book examines Morell’s career to the present day, including his earlier works in black-and-white and never before published color photographs from the past decade. An essay by Elizabeth Siegel, along with a recent interview with the artist and an illustrated chronology of his life and works, offers a riveting portrait of this contemporary photographer and his ongoing artistic endeavors.

Abelardo Morell: The Universe Next Door

Abelardo Morell

Oxford Reading Tree TreeTops Graphic Novels: Level 14: The Taj

Children's Books

Literature & Fiction

OUP Oxford

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Books by Elizabeth Siegel