Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Nice book in good condition. Pages in excellent bright unused condition. Cover has lots of wear and tear. No notes or highlighting. See images. Fantastic book.

About the book >.>.> In 1851 when photographs were first shown at the Great Exhibition of Arts and Industry pho- tography was primarily a hobby for well-to-do amateurs. These early photographers were members of the intellectual and aristocratic elite. They had the means the education and the leisure to pursue this new art-science with ardent seriousness. They formed societies such as the Photographic Society and the Photo- graphic Exchange Club and published journals for the purpose of sharing their discoveries exchanging photographs and publicizing the medium. In this highly original and sensitive book about the birth and transformation of photography in Victorian England Grace Seiberling explores the work of thirty-three amateur photographers. She describes how they affected the development of the medium and set technical subject and compositional stan- dards for future generations of photographers. Until now the question of the amateur’s role in the history of photography has been largely ignored. Seiberling shows that many of the technical advances in photography during the 1850s were initiated by the experiments of the amateurs including the discovery of hypo as a fixing agent the invention of the collodion pro- cess and the development of alkaline gold toning. The very absence of any defined stan- dards for the medium presented the amateurs with an unlimited number of choices. They enjoyed the challenge of solving the technical problems as well as the pure wonder of the new phenomenon. (SP)