A curious & ingenious art : reflections on daguerreotypes at Harvard / Melissa Banta with contributions by M. Susan Barger, Deborah Martin Kao & Robin McElheny ; foreword by Sidney Verba.

Main entry:

Banta, Melissa, 1953-

Title & Author:

A curious & ingenious art : reflections on daguerreotypes at Harvard / Melissa Banta with contributions by M. Susan Barger, Deborah Martin Kao & Robin McElheny ; foreword by Sidney Verba.

Publication:

Iowa City : Published for Harvard University Library by the University of Iowa Press, 2000.

Description:

xxiii, 178 pages : illustrations (some color) ; 26 cm

Notes:
Includes bibliographical references (pages 169-173) and index.
Also issued online.
Dust jacket.

Summary:

"The collection includes the work of America's pioneering daguerreotypists, including Mathew Brady, Southworth and Hawes, and John Adams Whipple. Most notably, the Harvard collection preserved for posterity such faces of the era as Oliver Wendell Holmes, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Henry James, James McNeill Whistler, Dorothea Dix, Jenny Lind, and even Tom Thumb."
"Harvard also saw the potential of photography for scientific research, as stunningly exemplified in one of the first detailed daguerreotypes of the moon, taken in 1851, as well as in images capturing the emergence of modern anesthesia. An unfortunate misuse of photography is recalled in the now famous slave daguerreotypes commissioned by natural historian Louis Agassiz, who believed in the theory of separate human species."
"The images represent the early history of photography and its use as a tool for documentation, scientific research, and artistic expression. A selection of daguerreotypes from the collections, some well known, others published for the first time, reveals the histories behind the images, stories which unveil in hauntingly beautiful detail the reflections of individuals who searched for purpose and promise in the new medium."--Jacket.

Resources:
Table of contents
Table of contents

ISBN:

0877457247 (alk. paper)
9780877457244 (alk. paper)

Subject:

Harvard University. Library Photograph collections.
Harvard University - Library - Photograph collections.
Harvard University. Library Photographie.
Harvard University. Library
Harvard University
Harvard university library.
Cambridge (Mass.) Harvard University.
Daguerreotype History.
Photograph collections Massachusetts Cambridge.
Daguerréotype Histoire.
Collections de photographies Massachusetts Cambridge.
Daguerreotype
Photograph collections
Daguerreotypie
Geschichte
Sammlung
Daguerréotype.
Massachusetts Cambridge

Form/genre:

History

Added entries:

Kao, Deborah Martin
Barger, M. Susan, 1949-
McElheny, Robin
Verba, Sidney.
Harvard University. Library.

Curious and ingenious art

Holdings:

Location: Library main 217515
Call No.: TR365 .B3 2000
Status: Available

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