Photography: The Early Years : A Historical Guide for Collectors

Dust jacket notes: "Photographs of the nineteenth century -- cards that have turned yellow-brown with age or plates under glass encased in plush velvet settings -- are for most people nostalgic fragments of the past, 'tintypes' that are remnants of one's family or of our nation's heritage. But for the rapidly expanding world of history-minded photographers and collectors of photography, art, and Americana, a closer look at early images reveals vast differences between cards, plates, slides, and stereographs. Photography: The Early Years, an unusual presentation of 267 photographs, rare advertisements, numerous anecdotes, and historical tidbits, is an unprecedented systematic resource on early daguerrean and post-daguerrean successes. George Gilbert not only illuminates the roots of each of the major processes, he also relates in fascinating detail the key incidents within the lives of the photographic giants (Brady, Watkins, Plumbe, Neff, the Langenheims, the showman Sarony, and others) whose fame rose with their development of the key processes explained in each chapter...."