Main entry:

Kelsey, Robin Earle.

Title & Author:

Archive style : photographs & illustrations for U.S. surveys, 1850-1890 / Robin Kelsey.

Publication:

Berkeley : University of California Press, ©2007.

Description:

xii, 273 pages : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm

Notes:
"Published with the assistance of the Getty Foundation"--Preliminary page.
"Ahmanson-Murphy fine arts imprint"--Preliminary page.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 245-261) and index.
Introduction : riddles and premises -- Arthur Schott : marking the Mexican boundary -- Timothy H. O'Sullivan : surveys of the American West -- C.C. Jones : the USGS investigation of the Charleston Earthquake -- Conclusion : archive style.

Summary:

"This imaginative study of American visual culture reveals how the political predicaments of a few small bureaucracies once fostered pictures of an extraordinary style. U.S. geographical and geological surveys of the late nineteenth century produced photographs and drawings of topography, American Indians, geologic features, botanical specimens, and specialists at work in the field. Some of these pictures have long been celebrated for their anticipation of a modernist aesthetic, but Robin Kelsey, in this abundantly illustrated volume, traces their modernistic qualities to archival ingenuity." "The technical and promotional needs of surveys, Kelsey argues, fostered the emergence of a taut, graphic pictorial style that imitated the informational clarity of diagrams and maps. As this book demonstrates, these pictures became sites of struggle as well as innovation when three brilliant survey artists and photographers subtly resisted the programs they were hired to serve. Discovering a politics of style behind the modernist look of survey pictures, Kelsey offers a fresh interpretation of canonical western expedition photographs by Timothy H. O'Sullivan and introduces two exceptional but largely forgotten sets of pictures: views of the U.S.-Mexico boundary from the 1850s by Arthur Schott and photographs of the Charleston earthquake of 1886 by C.C. Jones."--Jacket.

Resources:
Table of contents
Table of contents
Table of contents
Contributor biographical information
Publisher description
Table of contents only

ISBN:

9780520249356 (cloth ; alk. paper)
0520249356 (cloth ; alk. paper)

Subject:

Photographic surveying History 19th century.
Geological surveys United States History 19th century.
Phototopographie Histoire 19e siècle.
74.01 history of (human) geography.
38.01 history of the earth sciences.
Geological surveys
Photographic surveying
Bildpublizistik
Geografie
Geologie
Grafik
Illustration
Landschaft
Fotografie
Visualisierung
Survey research.
Geology.
Geography.
Photos.
Photography in geography.
Photography United States History 19th century.
Fotografi Förenta staterna historia 1800-talet.
Fotografer Förenta staterna historia 1800-talet.
United States
USA
1850-1890

Form/genre:

History

Added entries:

Getty Foundation.

Holdings:

Location: Library main 251590
Call No.: BIB 181138
Status: Available