A Flood of Pictures : The Formation of a Picture Culture in the United States / Michael Leja.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Leja, Michael, 1951- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Photography--United States--History--19th century.

Photography.

Pictures--Printing--United States--19th century.

Pictures.

Visual communication--United States--History--19th century.

Visual communication.

Pictures as information resources--United States--History--19th century.

Pictures as information resources.

Pictures--Social aspects--United States--History--19th century.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (vi, 394 pages) : illustrations

Place of Publication:

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania : University of Pennsylvania Press, [2025]

Summary:

Explores how the widespread circulation of pictures reshaped a nineteenth-century US culture that was accustomed to printed and spoken wordsWhen and how did pictures start to permeate everyday lives in the United States? What happened to those daily lives when they did? And what happened to pictures in the process? In this full-color, heavily illustrated book, Michael Leja traces the beginnings of a transformation in cultural life in the United States: when the widespread circulation of pictures reshaped a culture accustomed to printed and spoken words.In the three decades before the Civil War, the ordinary experiences of a large segment of the population came to include pictures of many kinds, including illustrations in books, pamphlets, and newspapers; photographs on cards; full-sheet printed pictures collected in scrapbooks or albums or hung on walls; posters and broadsheets; spectacular paintings displayed in theatrical venues; and more. Pictures supplemented verbal texts—and in some cases overshadowed them—for conveying news and information; portraying people, places, and events; focusing public discourse; selling things; educating and instructing; generating excitement and aesthetic gratification; promoting and disguising political agendas; shaping social identities; and building and undermining social bonds.A Flood of Pictures recovers a time before successful pictorial formulas for mass appeal were established, before an audience habituated to consumption of pictures existed, and before pictures had become thoroughly commodified. Through its exploration of these nineteenth-century developments, the book reveals the foundations of our picture-saturated twenty-first century.

Contents:

Frontmatter

CONTENTS

Introduction

CHAPTER 1 Picturing News

CHAPTER 2 Almanacs and the Image Campaign of 1840

CHAPTER 3 Illuminating a Bible for the Masses

CHAPTER 4 Fortified Political Portraits

CHAPTER 5 Jenny Lind and Early Celebrity Portraits

CHAPTER 6 Mass-Marketing Photography. The Langenheim Brothers’ Niagara Falls Tours

CHAPTER 7 An Illustrated Weekly for the United States: Gleason’s Pictorial

Conclusion

NOTES

Index

Acknowledgments

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

Other Format:

Print version: Leja, Michael A Flood of Pictures

ISBN:

9781512826814

OCLC:

1504696332