Photography and its Critics: A Cultural History, 1839–1900 (Perspectives on Photography)

Photography and its Critics offers an original overview of nineteenth-century American and European writing about photography from such disparate fields as art theory, social reform, and physiology. In this study, Mary Warner Marien argues that photography was an important social and cultural symbol for modernity and change in several fields, such as art and social reform. Moreover, she demonstrates how photography quickly emerged as a pliant symbol for modernity and change, one that could as easily oppose progress as promote democracy.\nAmazon.com Review\nThis dense overview of 19th-century American and European writing about photography is a photographic history situated in the humanities. "It presents photography as an idea, shaped by social concerns and inherited concepts," explains Mary Warner Marien, who examines how the medium developed as a symbol of social change. She looks at the evolving cultural notion of photography and shows how it emerged as a symbol for modernity. The text is enhanced by dozens of illustrations typifying the dimensions of a long-gone era's popular and artistic photography.