Cities in silver : American urban photography, 1839-1915
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Date
1981
Authors
Hales, Peter B. (Peter Bacon)
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In 1920, the United States census officially declared that the previous decade had made America a nation of cities and city dwellers. That announcement culminated a process of urbanization which had been accelerating since before the American Revolution. Yet the mathematically verifiable facts of population growth and shift masked a more general cultural process by which the mythos of America's fundamentally agrarian nature gave way to a new self-conception. This study examines that transformation of American culture, by looking at one of the most pervasive and potent vehicles of that change -- the mass produced and mass-disseminated urban photography made during the years between the introduction of the medium in 1839, and 1915, the approximate date of America's irrevocable urbanization. Between 1839 and 1915, many photographers took the city as their subject. Silent about their craft, operating in a time when the photographer was an invisible and effectively status-less professional, these men and women --directly or indirectly-- defined and ordered their contemporaries' understanding of the urban environment, its perils and potentials. Their vision of the city became the heritage of modern America. The contribution of photographers to the evolution of urban America has yet to be fully explored or analyzed. Their influence has come under scrutiny only rarely. Yet like their predecessors, the mapmakers of the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries, they served crucial functions for their time and culture. Offering not simply facts but information, they were cultural messengers. Their messages both reflected and defined how Americans saw their cities. More importantly, they assisted in the process by which American culture adjusted to its urbanization.