Description
TitleA transatlantic fraternity
Date Created2017
Other Date2017-05 (degree)
Extent1 online resource (xvi, 281 p. : ill.)
DescriptionHistories of early photography have routinely focused on France, England, and the US, seldom mentioning the region we call “Germany” today, and often discuss each country’s affairs in isolation from others. This dissertation, in contrast, explores how photographers, photographs, photographic processes, and writings about the medium have been traversing cultural borders since its invention. By understanding photography as a vehicle of cross-cultural dialogue, this dissertation investigates the specific interactions it enabled between the United States and Germany. It uncovers their exchange of photographs, technologies, and ideas about the medium between the 1840s and 1880s, a period when roughly six million Germans immigrated to America’s shores. It further suggests that networks of exchange between Germany and the US, cultivated through a large immigrant community, were pivotal to the development of photography on American soil. Chapter One examines the work of German immigrants William and Frederick Langenheim, who operated a studio in mid-century Philadelphia. By looking at their advertisements and celebrated panorama of Niagara Falls, this chapter argues that their success was tied to their connection with their German homeland. Chapter Two analyzes the shift in photographic vision in three editions of a stereoscopic guidebook on the White Mountains of New Hampshire produced by the Bierstadt brothers. More than simply illustrated travel guides, their aesthetics and photomechanical printing techniques functioned transculturally, much like the artists themselves. Chapter Three chronicles Dr. Hermann Vogel’s position as the German correspondent to the American journal the Philadelphia Photographer from 1866 until 1886. It outlines how his column advanced the growing relationship between German and American photographic circles. Chapter Four examines the photographs of Alfred Stieglitz during his years of study in Berlin and compares them to his German photographic peers. Emphasizing the importance of German photographic culture to Stieglitz, beyond just noting his education, runs counter to dominant narratives about his artistic formation and can thus change future studies about him and American art photography more broadly. My dissertation uses the interactions between German and American photography in the nineteenth century to reframe the medium’s historiography in transnational terms, contributing to its so-called global turn.
NotePh.D.
NoteIncludes bibliographical references
Noteby Shana Simone Lopes
Genretheses, ETD doctoral
Languageeng
CollectionGraduate School - New Brunswick Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Organization NameRutgers, The State University of New Jersey
RightsThe author owns the copyright to this work.