Experimental self-portraits in early French photography

Summary: "This book explores a range of experimental self-portraits made in France between 1840 and 1870, including remarkable images by Hippolyte Bayard, Nadar, Duchenne de Boulogne, and Countess de Castiglione. Adapting photography for different social purposes, each of these pioneers showcased their own body as a living artifact and iconic attraction. Examining performative specimens of early photography, Jillian Lerner considers the medium's uncanny transformation of identity and embodiment. She highlights the tactical importance of photographic demonstrations, promotions, conversations, and the mongrel forms of montage, painted photographs, albums, and personal correspondence. The author shows how photographic practices are mobilized in diverse cultural contexts, and enmeshed with the histories of art, science, publicity, urban spectacle, and private life in nineteenth-century France. Tracing calculated and creative approaches to a new medium, this research also contributes to an archaeology of the present. It furnishes a prehistory of the "selfie" and offers historical perspectives on the forces that reshape human perception and social experience. This interdisciplinary study will appeal to readers interested in photography, the history of photography, art, visual culture, and media studies"--

Record details

ISBN: 9781000214772 (Mobipocket ebook)
ISBN: 9781000214727 (PDF ebook)
ISBN: 9781000214826 (ePub ebook)
ISBN: 9781003105503
ISBN: 1501344951
ISBN: 9781501344954
Physical Description: xiii, 178 pages : illustrations (black and white) ; 25 cm.
print
Publisher: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York : Routledge, 2021.