Full Description
This biographical dictionary of some 3,000 photographers (and workers in related trades), active in a vast area of North America before 1866, is based on extensive research and enhanced by some 240 illustrations, most of which are published here for the first time.
The territory covered extends from central Canada through Mexico and includes the United States from the Mississippi River west to, but not including, the Rocky Mountain states. Together, this volume and its predecessor, Pioneer Photographers of the Far West: A Biographical Dictionary, 1840-1865, comprise an exhaustive survey of early photographers in North America and Central America, excluding the eastern United States and eastern Canada.
This work is distinguished by the large number of entries, by the appealing narratives that cover both professional and private lives of the subjects, and by the painstaking documentation. It will be an essential reference work for historians, libraries, and museums, as well as for collectors of and dealers in early American photography.
In addition to photographers, the book includes photographic printers, retouchers, and colorists, and manufacturers and sellers of photographic apparatus and stock. Because creators of moving panoramas and optical amusements such as dioramas and magic lantern performances often fashioned their works after photographs, the people behind those exhibitions are also discussed.
Contents
Contents @toc1:Foreword by Martha A. Sandweiss 000 Preface 000 Acknowledgments 000 @toc2:Introduction 000 Guide to the Main Entries 000 Biographical Dictionary 000 Anonymous Workers 000 @toc1:Appendix 1: Photographic Partnership, Company, and Gallery Names to December 31, 1865: A Cross-Reference List 000 Appendix 2: Panoramas, Stereopticons, Cosmoramas, and Other Public Performances: A Cross-Reference List 000 Appendix 3: Women Workers 000 Appendix 4: Workers Known Only as "Artist" 000 Appendix 5: Geographical distribution of Workers 000 Bibliography 000
