Photography and its Critics: A Cultural History, 1839-1900 (Perspectives on Photography)

This dense overview of 19th-century American and European writing about photography is a photographic history situated in the humanities. "It presents photography as an idea, shaped by social concerns and inherited concepts," explains Mary Warner Marien, who examines how the medium developed as a symbol of social change. She looks at the evolving cultural notion of photography and shows how it emerged as a symbol for modernity. The text is enhanced by dozens of illustrations typifying the dimensions of a long-gone era's popular and artistic photography.