Women in the Dark
Female Photographers in the US, 1850–1900
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- USD 24.99
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- USD 24.99
Descripción editorial
Recover the stories of long-overlooked American women who, at a time when women rarely worked outside the home, became commercial photographers and shaped the new, challenging medium. Covering two generations of photographers ranging from New York City to California’s mining districts, this study goes beyond a broad survey and explores individual careers through primary sources and new materials. Profiles of the photographers animate their careers by exploring how they began, the details of running their own studios, and their visual output. The featured photos vary in form—daguerreotype, tintype, carte de visite, and more—and subject, including Civil War portraits, postmortem photography, and landscape photography. This welcome resource fills in gaps in photographic, American, and women's history and convincingly lays out the parallels between the growth of photography as an available medium and the late-19th-century women's movement.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Manthorne (California Mexicana), an art history professor at CUNY, provides a revealing portrait of early forgotten women commercial photographers in this graceful and thoughtful illustrated history. Filled with rare examples of the women's art, the book provides short biographies of the photographers along with an appendix featuring articles written by some of the artists themselves (e.g. "How a Woman Makes Landscape Photographs" by Eliza W. Withington in an 1876 issue of Philadelphia Photographer). Many early photographers supported their families with their work after losing husbands; they often concentrated on spirit work and shots of women and children at weddings, births, and on deathbeds (one 1860s daguerreotype taken in Wisconsin by Miss A.L. Paulus is titled Deceased Young Boy in a Dark Suit). Manthorne is an astute and thoughtful guide as she points out the many photographers who turned their attention to landscape and architecture, and promoted various causes (N.L. Rowley photographed women in bloomers and pants in a reaction to the constraining corsets in the mid-19th century). As cameras became cheaper and more accessible, everyday "Kodak girls" began documenting their travels and interests. This focused work brings forgotten history to life and will attract feminists and photographers alike.
