Table Of ContentPhotography and the USA
Mick Gidley
Photography and the USA
EXPOSURESis a series of books on photography designed to explore the
rich history of the medium from thematic perspectives. Each title
presents a striking collection of approximately80 images and an
engaging, accessible text that offers intriguing insights into a specific
theme or subject.
Series editors: Mark Haworth-Booth and Peter Hamilton
Also published
Photography and Australia Helen Ennis
Photography and Spirit John Harvey
Photography and Cinema David Campany
Photography and Literature François Brunet
Photography and Science Kelley Wilder
Photography and Flight Denis Cosgrove and William L. Fox
Photography and Egypt Maria Golia
Photography and Africa Erin Haney
Photography and Italy Maria Antonella Pelizzari
Photography and the USA
Mick Gidley
reaktion books
To my grandchildren, Nathan, Seth and Ramona, trusting that you will
one day enjoy both photography and the USA
Published by Reaktion Books Ltd
33Great Sutton Street
London ec1v 0dx
www.reaktionbooks.co.uk
First published 2011
Copyright © Mick Gidley 2011
All rights reserved
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.
Printed and bound in China
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Gidley, M. (Mick)
Photography and the USA. – (Exposures)
1. Photography – United States
2. Social aspects –United States –History
I. Title II Series.
770.9'73-dc22
isbn978 1 86189 770 1
Contents
Introduction 7
one Technologies 31
two Histories 62
three Documents 99
four Emblems 131
References 166
Select Bibliography 172
Acknowledgements 176
Photo Acknowledgements 177
Index 178
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Introduction
Folk Effects
Photography and the usais written out of a conviction that – in ways both
large and small – there has been a symbiotic connection between the
medium of photography and the nation that has emerged as the world’s
remaining superpower. In ways to be substantiated as we proceed, it is
definitely the case that Americans have always been prominent in photog -
raphy and, at least since the Second World War, have dominated the
world image economy: the production, selection and transmission of
photographic images of all kinds. And this has happened on such a scale
that to some – including Roland Barthes in his essay on the American
origins of ‘The Family of Man’ exhibition that was mounted in numerous
venues around the globe during the 1950s – it has seemed that photog -
raphy has served as an actual projection of the economic, political and
ideological power of the usa.1Whether or not such a causal and one-to-
one connection between the nation and the medium is justified, the link
itself exists. That is, we are not speaking simply of photography inthe
1 Aerial view, looking northwest, of the usa– the emergence and development of the medium as an industry,
Statue of Liberty, taken by Jack E. art and hobby – or of photography of the usa– the efforts, some of
Boucher in 1978, with the then relatively
them actually government-sponsored, as in the case of the frontispiece
new twin towers of the World Trade
Center on the horizon. This image image, to capture, record or commemorate the peoples, landscapes and
is one of many in a sequence devoted
ways of life of the nation – though, of course, both feature here. In the
to Liberty as part of the documentation
of significant engineering projects approach adopted, in the selection of topics for discussion and in the
conducted by the Historic American analyses of specific images, the focus, indeed the stress, is on photog -
Engineering Record (HAER) of the U.S.
raphy and the usa.
National Park Service, 7
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In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, before the u.s.
2 Untitled photo-collage by an unknown
acquired the actual political, economic and military might of today, it maker, c. 1870, albumen print.
already exerted marked ideological power. This was a period when both
photography as practice and a plethora of photographic images were
becoming ever more readily available to ordinary people. It was an
ambience in which numerous photo-collages were produced. One cele-
brated example comprises a group of 30blueprint photographs, mostly
of landscape scenes, printed on cloth and sewn together to make a pillow.
It is reminiscent of a patchwork quilt, a form of needlework that, in the u.s.
at the time, was produced by individual women and, out of sociability, by
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