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Author Banta, Melissa, 1953-

Title A curious & ingenious art : reflections on daguerreotypes at Harvard / Melissa Banta with contributions by M. Susan Barger, Deborah Martin Kao & Robin McElheny ; foreword by Sidney Verba.

Publication Info. Iowa City : Published for Harvard University Library by the University of Iowa Press, 2000.

Copies

Location Call No. Status
 Manchester, Main Library - Non Fiction  772.1209 BANTA    Check Shelf
Description xxiii, 178 pages : illustrations (some color) ; 26 cm
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages [169]-173) and index.
Form Also issued online.
Summary "The collection includes the work of America's pioneering daguerreotypists, including Mathew Brady, Southworth and Hawes, and John Adams Whipple. Most notably, the Harvard collection preserved for posterity such faces of the era as Oliver Wendell Holmes, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Henry James, James McNeill Whistler, Dorothea Dix, Jenny Lind, and even Tom Thumb.".
"Harvard also saw the potential of photography for scientific research, as stunningly exemplified in one of the first detailed daguerreotypes of the moon, taken in 1851, as well as in images capturing the emergence of modern anesthesia. An unfortunate misuse of photography is recalled in the now famous slave daguerreotypes commissioned by natural historian Louis Agassiz, who believed in the theory of separate human species.".
"The images represent the early history of photography and its use as a tool for documentation, scientific research, and artistic expression. A selection of daguerreotypes from the collections, some well known, others published for the first time, reveals the histories behind the images, stories which unveil in hauntingly beautiful detail the reflections of individuals who searched for purpose and promise in the new medium."--BOOK JACKET.
Subject Daguerreotype -- History.
Harvard University. Library -- Photograph collections.
Photograph collections -- Massachusetts -- Cambridge.
Cambridge (Mass.) -- Harvard University.
Daguerreotypie.
Geschichte.
Sammlung.
Genre/Form History. (OCoLC)fst01411628
Subject Harvard University. Library. (OCoLC)fst00530721
Daguerreotype. (OCoLC)fst00886764
Photograph collections. (OCoLC)fst01061600
Massachusetts -- Cambridge. (OCoLC)fst01205363
Added Author Harvard University. Library.
Added Title Curious and ingenious art
Other Form: Online version: Banta, Melissa, 1953- Curious & ingenious art. Iowa City : Published for Harvard University Library by the University of Iowa Press, 2000 (OCoLC)606487862
ISBN 0877457247 (alkaline paper)
9780877457244 (alkaline paper)
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