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1839–1900, Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press,
1987 [1978].
Alfred Eberlein (ed.), Die Presse der Arbeiterklasse und der
sozialen Bewegungen: von den dreißiger Jahren des 19.
Jahrhunderts bis zum Jahre 1967; Bibliographie und Stan-
dortverzeichnis der Presse der deutschen, der österreichischen
und der schweizerischen Arbeiter-, Gewerkschafts- und
Berufsorganisationen (einschließlich der Protokolle und
Tätigkeitsberichte, Archivalische Forschungen zur Geschichte
der deutschen Arbeiterbewegung Bd.6, Frankfurt am Main:
Sauer & Auvermann, 1968 passim.
Ludwig Hoerner, Das photographische Gewerbe in Deutschland
1839–1914, Düsseldorf: GfW, 1989, 55–57.
Hannavy, John, Images of a Century—the Centenary of the British
Institute of Professional Photography, Ware: British Institute
of Professional Photography, 2001.
McCauley, Anne, Industrial Madness—Commercial Photogra-
phy in Paris 1848–1871, New Haven, CT and London: Yale
University Press, 1994.
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
In view of photography’s extraordinary development
and deep assimilation in the United States, it has been
suggested that although it originated in Europe, it should
really have been invented in the U.S. Such a claim could
hardly be justifi ed on mere technological grounds, since
by all accounts there were few, if any, serious precur-
sors in the U.S., and since the American contribution to
photographic technologies was minor, at least until the
emergence of dry plates and popular photography after
- Similarly, the artistic achievement of 19th-century
American photographers, at least until the 1890s, has
often been regarded as secondary in comparison to that
of leading European countries, although since 1975 or
so a few American “masters,” such as Edward S. Curtis
or Carleton E. Watkins, have received increasing atten-
tion. If one is to uphold the idea of a special success of
photography in the U.S., then it must be understood less
in the traditional categories of science and art, and more
in terms of social, economic, and cultural development,
as was already made clear in Robert Taft’s pioneering
history of American photography, published in 1938
under the signifi cant title Photography and the American
Scene: A Social History, 1839–1889.
Social history, in a broad sense, has been a con-
tinuing trend in the ever-increasing historiography of
19th-century American photography since Taft, and
it has been important not only in unveiling previously
unknown or underestimated American photographers
and pictures, but more generally in stressing social pat-
terns of practice, use, and appreciation. These patterns
were doubtless more pronounced or more noticeable
in the U.S. than elsewhere, but they were by no means
unique to the U.S. In that sense, the social bend of much
of American historiography has served in recent years
as a model for other areas, especially Europe, where
the social dimension of photography had often been
eclipsed by a more narrowly academic historiography.
The following presentation, while arranged in broad
chronological fashion, will focus on the connections
between photography and society, which in the case
of the U.S. determined the course of photography as
a medium of culture and memory, rather than a mere
form of art.
Most accounts of the beginnings of photography in
the U.S. have emphasized the sweeping enthusiasm of
Americans for what Oliver Wendell Holmes called “the
mirror with a memory,” i.e., the daguerreotype, which
was the sole process being practiced in the 1840s and
which was dominant until 1855 at least. This enthusi-
asm was refl ected in countless press articles and other
records, starting with Samuel F.B. Morse’s famous
description of Daguerre’s “results” in a letter he sent
his brothers from Paris in March 1839, and which was
subsequently published in dozens of American news-
papers. According to the American painter-inventor,
Daguerre’s plates were “Rembrandt perfected,” and
“their exquisite perfection almost transcend[ed] the
bounds of sober belief.” A few months later, Edgar A.
Poe hailed the daguerreotype as “the most important,
and perhaps the most extraordinary triumph of modern
science,” while Ralph W. Emerson, noting the sobering
effect of a daguerreotype sitting, wrote in his journal
that “a Daguerreotype Institute is worth a National
Fast.” Many more examples of this enthusiasm could
be adduced, especially from the scientifi c, literary and
artistic milieus, which almost unanimously embraced
the daguerreotype and in many cases kept abreast of
improvements. What was perhaps most distinctive about
the American response, however, was not its superla-
tive and sometimes fantastic character, but its primarily
social and technical dimension, which quickly trans-
formed the foreign invention, its use and its practice,
into a booming profession and something of a national
pastime. It would be exaggerated to claim that the be-
ginnings of photography in the U.S. amounted to a rush
of entrepreneurs and fortune-seekers, as opposed to the
genteel world of savants and artistes supposedly typical
of European countries. Many of the early practitioners
and promoters of the daguerreotype in the U.S., notably
in New York, Philadelphia and many other cities, were
artists, such as Morse, whose studio served in 1840 as a
school for many a future great of American photography,
including Mathew B. Brady, Edward Anthony, and Al-
bert S. Southworth. Most American painters of the mid-
century would experiment in one way or another with
the daguerreotype and then with other processes. One
must not overlook either the initial role of professional
scientists, such as the leading chemist and colleague
of Morse at New York University John W. Draper, the
University of Pennsylvania chemist Paul Beck God-
dard, and the future president of Columbia University