19th Cent. Life
Galleries of Friendship and Fame is the first comprehensive investigation of the origin, development, and practices of 19th-century American photograph albums. In this fascinating book, the author argues that the album--whether functioning as family record, parlor entertainment, social register, national portrait gallery, or advertisement for photography itself--helped transform the nature of self-presentation at the cusp of modernity.
This handsome volume examines carte de visite and cabinet card albums from their introduction in the United States in 1861 through the rise of the snapshot at the century's end. By examining a wealth of previously overlooked primary materials, this study offers a completely new understanding of photograph albums, revealing how they emerged, how they were marketed and sold, and how families displayed and told stories through them. Galleries of Friendship and Fame addresses the history of technology and innovation, the interconnectedness of the commercial and domestic spheres, and the ways photography helped shape notions of identity, family, and nation in a rapidly changing America.
Subtle changes in building long before the Revolutionary War hinted at the growing independence of the American colonies and their desire to be less like the British.
Records of estate auctions show that many households in Colonial America contained only one chair--underscoring the patriarchal nature of the early American family. All other members of the household sat on stools or the floor.
The excavation of a tiny community of freed slaves in Massachusetts reveals evidence of the transplantation of African culture to North America.
Simultaneously a study of American life and an explanation of how American life is studied, "In Small Things Forgotten," through the everyday details of ordinary living, colorfully depicts a world hundreds of years in the past.
