Lens, laboratory, landscape : observing modern Spain / Claudia Schaefer.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Schaefer, Claudia, 1949- author.

Series:

SUNY series in Latin American and Iberian Thought and Culture

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Material culture--Spain--History--19th century.

Material culture.

Material culture--Spain--History--20th century.

Spain--Intellectual life--History--19th century.

Spain.

Spain--Intellectual life--History--20th century.

Ramón y Cajal, Santiago, 1852-1934.

Ramón y Cajal, Santiago.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (256 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Albany, New York : SUNY Press, 2014.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Lens, Laboratory, Landscape focuses on competing views about the power of vision in Spain between the 1830s and the 1950s. The photographic lens, laboratory microscope, "retinal vision" of philosopher José Ortega y Gasset, and the topographical studies of Manuel de Terán are woven together in and around a European cultural milieu that gave observation primacy. For once, Spain—now bereft of its empire—was not on the outside of such debates. Whether in the laboratory, family home, darkroom, art gallery, or on the road, in Cuba or Zaragoza, Madrid or Massachusetts, Spanish artists and scientists were engaged with the social and economic power of observation at a time when the speed of modern life made observing a challenge. Claudia Schaefer brings the technologies of the eye—photograph, microscope, lens, tools for land surveying—to light as markers on the nation's touted path to modernity.

Contents:

""Contents""; ""List of Illustrations""; ""Acknowledgments""; ""Introduction""; ""Chapter One: The Creation of a New Scientific Persona: Santiago Raman y Cajal and the Rise of Popular Photography in Spain""; ""Chapter Two: The Curtain Rises on the Magic Theater of Life: Cajal, Master of Light and Color""; ""Chapter Three: Matter, Time, and Landscape: Ways of Seeing in Cajal, Ortega, and Benjamin""; ""Chapter Four: Science as a Two-Way Street: Contradictory Traces of Modernity in Dal and Teran""; ""Conclusion: A Last Look at Observation""; ""Notes""; ""Works Cited""; ""Index""

Notes:

Includes index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9781438452746

1438452748

OCLC:

923420605