Abstract
Photography became a dominant medium in mass culture starting in the late nineteenth century. As it happened, viewers increasingly used their reactions to photographs to comment on and debate public issues as vital as war, national identity, and citizenship. Cara A. Finnegan analyzes a wealth of newspaper and magazine articles, letters to the editor, trial testimony, books, and speeches produced by viewers in response to specific photos they encountered in public. From the portrait of a young Lincoln to images of child laborers and Depression-era hardship, Finnegan treats the photograph as a locus for viewer engagement and constructs a history of photography's viewers that shows how Americans used words about images to participate in the politics of their day. As she shows, encounters with photography helped viewers negotiate the emergent anxieties and crises of U.S. public life through not only persuasion but action, as well.
Original language | English (US) |
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Publisher | University of Illinois Press |
Number of pages | 242 |
ISBN (Electronic) | 9780252097317 |
ISBN (Print) | 9780252039263 |
State | Published - Jan 1 2015 |
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- General Arts and Humanities
- General Social Sciences
Fingerprint
Dive into the research topics of 'Making photography matter: A viewer’s history from the civil war to the great depression'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.Prizes
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James A. Winans - Herbert A. Wichelns Memorial Award for Distinguished Scholarship in Rhetoric and Public Address
Finnegan, C. (Recipient), 2016
Prize: Prize/Award
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NCA Visual Communication Division Outstanding Book Award
Finnegan, C. A. (Recipient), 2015
Prize: Prize/Award
Press/Media
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Professor Cara A. Finnegan honored by the National Communication Association
9/23/16
1 item of Media coverage
Press/Media: Research
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How we view Lincoln may say more about us than him, says scholar of photo history
4/2/15
1 Media contribution
Press/Media: Research