Main entry:

Brunet, François, 1960-2018, author.

Title & Author:

The birth of the idea of photography / François Brunet ; translated by Shane B. Lillis.

Publication:

Toronto, Canada : Ryerson Image Centre ; Cambridge, Massachusetts ; London, England : The MIT Press, [2019]
©2019

Description:

xx pages, 1 unnumbered leaf of plates, 385 pages : illustrations (some color) ; 24 cm

Series:

RIC books. Essentials ; 3

Notes:
Includes bibliographical references (pages 367-379) and index.
Preface -- Introduction : The Idea of Photography -- Part 1. Inventions : The Daguerre Moment -- Chapter 1. The Atechnical Image -- The Origins : A "Mystery" Induced -- The Dream and the Idea -- The Dispositif : The Camera Obscura -- The Photochemical Sector -- Inventors and Scientists -- British Inertia? -- A Sociological Rift -- Daguerre and the Daguerreotype -- Daguerreotype and Heliography -- Daguerre's Paradoxes -- The 1838 Prospectus -- The Term Daguerreotype -- Assessment -- Chapter 2. The Institution of Photography -- The Scholarly Episode -- Arago and the Academy -- The Session of January 7, 1839 -- Paris and London -- The Vocabulary of Photography -- Assessment of the Scholarly Episode -- The Daguerre Law -- The Friend of Progress -- A Chronology of 1839 -- Motivations for an Exceptional Legislative Act -- Arago's Address -- History : Magic and Positivity -- Epigraphy and Memory -- Aesthetics : "An Immense Service to the Arts" -- Technique -- Science and Semiotics -- Conclusion : Technique and Science -- The Institution of Photography : Assessment -- A Republican Toy? -- Formal Characteristics of the French Invention -- Chapter 3. The Pencil of Nature -- A Private Enterprise -- French "Liberality" and British Inertia -- Talbot's Patents -- The Photographic Book : Contexts -- Technological Innovation and Rhetorical Strategy -- The Anti-Arago : The Gentleman Photographer and the Magic of Light -- Photography and Language -- The Photographic Book : Writing of the Self -- The Dutch School -- False Pretenses -- The Scene in the Library -- Virgil -- Assessment : A Precious Art? -- Chapter 4. The Daguerreotype in the United States : Photography and Democracy -- The Acclimatization of the Daguerreotype in the United States -- Theory and Practice : The Tocquevillian Paradox -- Social Logic, Institutional Dynamic -- American Scholars and the Daguerreotype -- Technical Imagination at the Service of the Portrait -- The Professionalization of the Practice -- The Crystal Palace and the Apogee of the American Daguerreotype -- A Conventional Ranking -- Climatology, Technology, Aesthetics : An Unknown Art -- The Exceptional Longevity of the Daguerreotype in the United States -- The Daguerreian Republic -- The Daguerreian Myth and the Guild -- Emerson and the "True Republican Painting" -- Assessment.
Part 2. Refoundings : The Kodak Moment -- Chapter 5. The Kodak Revolution -- The Century of the Professionals -- The Professionals : An Underground Art -- Popularization and Its Early Stages -- Eastman : The Industrial Prehistory of a Commercial Concept -- The Kodak Moment -- The Word and the Thing -- The Advent of a "Middle-Brow Art" -- The "New Vision" : Stieglitz -- The Sociological Reading -- A "Straight" Vision and the Kodak -- The Eastman Kodak Empire -- Selling Film -- The "Kodak King" and "Mister Smith" -- Assessment -- Chapter 6. Inexact Image, Device, or Sign? Towards a Thinking about Photography -- The Science of Photography in the Nineteenth Century : Landmarks -- Technical Evolution : From Immobility to Movement -- Photographic Methodologies -- Photography as an Organizational Norm -- Photography as the Image of Science -- The Didactic Photography Paradigm and Its Evolution after 1880 -- Discursive Modalities of the Photographic Fact -- The Classic Use : The Photographic Image as Antithesis -- A New Paradigm : The Photographic Apparatus -- Critics of the Metaphor : Freud and Bergson -- Photographic Production and Kodak Pedagogy -- Photography in Peirce's Thinking -- Peirce as User of Photography -- The Example Photography : Phenomenology -- The Example Photography and the Second Semiotic Trichotomy -- The Third Trichotomy : The Photograph as Syntax -- Interpretation -- Conclusion -- Bibliography -- Editor's Note and Acknowledgements -- Index.
In English; translated from the French.

Summary:

"This influential text by French historian and theorist François Brunet considers the invention and history of photography as the birth of an idea, rather than a new type of image. This 'idea photography' combines a logical theme - that of an art without artistry - and the democratic political promise of an art for all. Officially endorsed by the 1839 French law on the daguerreotype, this idea reverberated throughout the nineteenth century in Europe and America. Brunet shows how emerging image technologies and practices in France and Britain were linked to this logical / political construction of photography, from the earliest researches of Nicéphore Niépce, Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre, and Henry Fox Talbot up to the turn of the twentieth century. The parallel development of the Kodak camera and Alfred Stieglitz's 'straight' vision in the United States then fulfilled, while also depreciating, the utopian promise of photography for all. This history reached a provisional climax with the reflections on images by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Hippolyte Adolphe Taine, Sigmund Freud, Henri-Louis Bergson, and Charles Sanders Peirce, reflections that both demonstrated the novelty of photography and forecast many later debates on its technology and aesthetics. The Birth of the Idea of Photography has been enriched with more than fifty photographs, reproduced in color, from North American and European collections. This edition also features a new preface by the author."-- Provided by publisher.

ISBN:

9780262043267 (hardcover)
0262043262 (hardcover)

Subject:

Photography Philosophy.
Photography Social aspects.
Photography History.
Photographie Philosophie.
Photographie Aspect social.
Photographie Histoire.
Photography.

Form/genre:

History.

Added entries:

Lillis, Shane B. (Shane Brendan), translator.
Brunet, François, 1960-2018. Naissance de l'idée de photographie. English.
RIC books ; 3.

Holdings:

Location: Library main 321966
Call No.: 321966
Copy: 1
Status: Available