The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History

These books provide good surveys of the subject:

Davenport, Alma. The History of Photography: An Overview. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1999.

Gernsheim, Helmut and Alison. The History of Photography from the Camera Obscura to the Beginning of the Modern Era. 2 vols. This work has a complicated publishing history. It was first published by Oxford University Press in 1955; a second enlarged edition was published in 1969 by Thames and Hudson; and a revised third edition of the second part only was published by Thames and Hudson in 1982 as The Rise of Photography: 1850-1880. New York, N.Y.: Thames and Hudson, 1982.

Hirsch, Robert. Seizing the Light: A History of Photography. Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2000.

Marien, Mary Warner. Photography: A Cultural History. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall; New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2002. This volume of essays was prepared to accompany a traveling exhibit mounted by the Carter Museum.

Dr. Sandweiss, the author of the essay you’ve just read, not only edited this volume but also contributed an article on photography in the American West:

Sandweiss, Martha, ed. Photography in Nineteenth-Century America. Fort Worth: Amon Carter Museum; New York: H.N. Abrams, 1991.

On the Internet, there are two excellent websites you should use as starting points:

British scholar Robert Leggat’s online “History of Photography” offers articles on the evolution of photographic techniques (tintypes, wet-plate and dry-plate technology, stereoscopic views, etc.), sketches of major figures in the history of photography, and almost everything else you could ask for. In the menu on the left of the homepage, “The Beginnings of Photography,” “Processes,” “Museums,” and “Significant People” may link you to the sections that will be most obviously helpful, but don’t skip any of his suggestions:

http://www.rleggat.com/photohistory/index.php

You’ll notice that I said Leggat’s site provides “almost everything else” you might need. Dr. Leggat admits he’s despaired of keeping up to date on websites related to the history of photography, so I’ll have to send you to another website for that. Fortunately, this one, the online American Museum of Photography is another winner. Their list of photography-related websites is an excellent one:

http://www.photographymuseum.com/primer.html#links

Be sure to go to the virtual Museum’s homepage to access the wonderful visual materials they have to offer. Allow yourself plenty of time for browsing and enjoying the riches:

http://www.photographymuseum.com/

If you just need quick and brief information, Wikipedia and About: Inventors will serve your purposes:

http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blphotography.htm

For English-language books on Daguerre and his processes, you can choose between this pair:

Gernsheim, Helmut and Alison. L.J.M. Daguerre: The History of the Diorama and the Daguerreotype. New York, Dover Publications, 1968.

Severa, Joan L. My Likeness Taken: Daguerreian Portraits in America. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 2005.

American Memory’s “America’s First Look into the Camera: Daguerreotype Portraits and Views, 1839-1864” is just superb. Don’t forget to follow all of the links under “Understanding the Collection” for more background information:

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/daghtml/daghome.html

And the “Collection Connections” link for a discussion of ways to use collection in the classroom:

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/ndlpedu/collections/dag/

George Eastman left most of his fortune to the museum and research center in Rochester, N.Y. that bears his name.. The George Eastman House website provides a spectacular online archive of historic photographs from its collections:

http://www.eastmanhouse.org/inc/collections/photography.php

PBS’s documentary on Eastman, “Wizard of Photography” is the focus of another of their helpful websites with good suggestions for further reading and classroom activities:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/eastman/index.php

These books will help you learn more about the various aspects of American life that the new art and science of photography helped record:

Lewinski, Jorge. The Camera at War: A History of War Photography from 1848 to the Present Day. London: W. H. Allen, 1978.

Brown, Julie K. Making Culture Visible: The Public Display of Photography at Fairs, Expositions, and Exhibitions in the United States, 1847- 1900. Australia; Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 2001.

Howe, Kathleen Stewart. First Seen: Portraits of the World's Peoples, 1840-1880. Santa Barbara, CA: Santa Barbara Museum of Art in association with Third Millennium Pub., London, 2004.

19th century photographs of native tribes (especially those of Edward S. Curtis) and western expansion remain a popular topic for study. As you’ll see, Martha Sandweiss is a major contributor in this field:

Gidley, Mick, ed. Edward S. Curtis and the North American Indian Project in the Field. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2003.

Makepeace, Anne. Edward S. Curtis: Coming To Light. Washington, D.C.: National Geographic, 2001.

Robotham, Tom. Native Americans in Early Photographs. San Diego, CA: Thunder Bay Press, 1994.

Sandweiss, Martha. “Picturing Indians: Curtis in Context.” Essay in The Plains Indian Photographs of Edward S. Curtis. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001.

Sandweiss, Martha. Print the Legend : Photography And The American West. New Haven : Yale University Press, 2002.

To see more of the work of Curtis and other photographers of the West and its people, go to our old friends at American Memory http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/index.php and look at these collections:

“Edward S. Curtis's The North American Indian,” “Photographic Images of American Indians of the Pacific Northwest,” “American Notes: Travels in America, 1750-1920,” and “History of the American West, 1860-1920: Photographs from the Collection of the Denver Public Library.”

Nineteenth-century photographs from The Gilder Lehrman Collection

GLC 03589
http://www.gilderlehrman.org/search/display_results.php?id=GLC03589
GLC 06391
http://www.gilderlehrman.org/search/display_results.php?id=GLC06391.12
GLC 01261
http://www.gilderlehrman.org/search/display_results.php?id=GLC01261
GLC 04689
http://www.gilderlehrman.org/search/display_results.php?id=GLC04689
GLC 04609
http://www.gilderlehrman.org/search/display_results.php?id=GLC04609
GLC 07077
http://www.gilderlehrman.org/search/display_results.php?id=GLC07077

Certainly one of the most successful of these published albums was Alexander Gardner's legendary Sketch Book, now available in two facsimile reprints:

Gardner's Photographic Sketchbook of the American Civil War, 1861-1865. New York: Delano Greenidge Editions, 2001.

Gardner's Photographic Sketch Book of the Civil War, 1865-1866. Reprint. New York: Dover Publications, 1959.

Gardner’s Sketch Book is available online, of course, but in segments. Eastman House has mounted all of the photos from the book, but not Gardner’s accompanying text:

http://www.eastman.org/ar/sketchbook/sketchbook-intro.html

This Cornell site reproduces the captions as well as images – but for only 30 of the 100 photographs in Gardner’s work:

http://rmc.library.cornell.edu/7milVol/images.html

And, of course, a search of American Memory for Gardner will bring hundreds of hits. Many of these are part of the project’s “Selected Civil War Photographs,” which contains more than 1,000 images, most produced by the Brady studio:

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/cwphtml/cwphome.html

An essay there titled “Does the Camera Ever Lie?” brings us to the next topic – the ways our perceptions or interpretations of an “objective” photograph can be influenced:

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/cwphtml/cwpcam/cwcam1.html

For another discussion of this problem, with lesson plans designed for classroom use, see “Critically Viewing Photographs” at Frank Baker’s commercial “Media Literacy” website:

http://www.frankwbaker.com/civil_war_lesson_plan_revised.htm