Fotografia

"A comprehensive study on Barthes and photography . . . the most studious research on the topic."--Antoine Compagnon, Columbia University and the Sorbonne

"Interesting and significant. . . . Important for scholars, students, and general readers interested in literature, art, photography, critical theory, and media studies."--Scott Nygren, University of Florida

French theoretician Roland Barthes enjoyed a long and shifting relationship with photography, using it first as metaphor, moving on to explore its use in movies, film stills, political campaigns, and popular photographic...

Seeing America explores the camera work of five women who directed their visions toward influencing social policy and cultural theory. Taken together, they visually articulated the essential ideas occupying the American consciousness in the years between the world wars.

Melissa McEuen examines the work of Doris Ulmann, who made portraits of celebrated artists in urban areas and lesser-known craftspeople in rural places; Dorothea Lange, who magnified human dignity in the midst of poverty and unemployment; Marion Post Wolcott, a steadfast believer in collective strength as the...

In Camera Clues, Joe Nickell shares his methods of identifying and dating old photos and demonstrates how to distinguish originals from copies and fakes. Particularly intriguing are his discussions of camera tricks, darkroom manipulations, retouching techniques, and uses of computer technology to deceive the eye. Camera Clues concludes with a look at allegedly "paranormal" photography, from nineteenth-century "spirit photographs" to UFO snapshots.

The advertising campaigns launched by Kodak in the early years of snapshot photography stand at the center of a shift in American domestic life that goes deeper than technological innovations in cameras and film. Before the advent of Kodak advertising in 1888, writes Nancy Martha West, Americans were much more willing to allow sorrow into the space of the domestic photograph, as evidenced by the popularity of postmortem photography in the mid-nineteenth century. Through the taking of snapshots, Kodak taught Americans to see their experiences as objects of nostalgia, to arrange their lives...

The advertising campaigns launched by Kodak in the early years of snapshot photography stand at the center of a shift in American domestic life that goes deeper than technological innovations in cameras and film. Before the advent of Kodak advertising in 1888, writes Nancy Martha West, Americans were much more willing to allow sorrow into the space of the domestic photograph, as evidenced by the popularity of postmortem photography in the mid-nineteenth century. Through the taking of snapshots, Kodak taught Americans to see their experiences as objects of nostalgia, to arrange their lives...

The only collection of photographs devoted to one of America's natural treasures, Shenandoah: Views of Our National Park documents one man's decades-long fascination with this uniquely beautiful region in Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains. Hullihen Williams Moore has been visiting Shenandoah National Park since the mid-1960s, but it was after studying with Ansel Adams in 1979 that he began seriously photographing it. Through fifty-one black-and-white duotone photographic prints, Moore reveals the quiet beauty of Shenandoah National Park. From grand vistas and waterfalls to the delicate...