Author: KASHER, STEVEN
Title: America and the tintype / Steven Kasher ; essays by Steven Kasher and Brian Wallis
Description: Gottingen : Steidl ; London : Thames & Hudson [distributor] 2008. Quality Book Club Edition. An exceptional copy; bound in colour-printed boards. Particularly and surprisingly well-preserved; tight. bright. clean and especially sharp-cornered. Literally as new and still in the publisher's protective shrink-wrap.; 8vo 8' - 9' tall; 267 pages; Physical desc. : 267 p. : chiefly ill. ; 26 cm. Subject: Tintype - Portrait photography - United States - Exhibitions / History. Contents: The art of business / Geoffrey Batchen -- American tintype portraits and the decline of Victorian middle-class propriety / Karen Halttunen -- Democratic visages : the tintype and America / Steven Kasher. Published in conjunction with the exhibition America and the tintype. organized by Steven Kasher and Brian Wallis for the International Center of Photography. New York. Sept. 19-Jan. 4. 2009. Summary: One of the most intriguing and little studied forms of nineteenth-century photography is the tintype. Introduced in 1856 as a low-cost alternative to the daguerreotype and the albumen print. the tintype was widely marketed from the 1860s through the first decades of the twentieth century as the most popular photographic medium. The picture-making preference of the people. it was almost never used for celebrity portraiture: It was affordable. portable. unique and available almost everywhere. Because of its ubiquity. the tintype provides a startlingly candid record of the political upheavals that rocked the four decades following the American Civil War-and the personal anxieties they induced. As this book's author. Steven Kasher. argues. the tintype studio became a kind of performance space in which sitters could act out their personal identities. Sitters brought to the tintype studio not just their family and friends but also the tools of their trade. costumes. toys. stuffed animals and other such props. Often they would enact stereotypes and fantasies that reflected or challenged conventional gender. race and class roles. Surprisingly. the tintype was almost exclusively an American phenomenon. rarely used in other countries. and this book demonstrates how this modest form of photography provides extraordinary insight into the development of national attitudes and characteristics in the formative years of the early Modern era.Weight in Kg appr.:

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