This book redefines the history of modernity by focusing on how people used photography to affirm continuity and social stability during a time defined by rapid transition in all every field of life. By the early 1860s, commercial portrait photography had become an everyday experience. Through their daily reception and interpretation, photographs were utilized to construct and consolidate social relations and to imagine social order visually. Queen Victorias ubiquitous photographic presence in private and communal contexts demonstrates how the new visual media re-enforced the power of conventional concepts of order and stability. Critical reflection on this mechanism is crucial to understanding current media practices as well.
- Groundbreaking and critical analysis of modernity
- Interdisciplinary approach combining art history and the history of photography, as well as gender, cultural and media studies
Eva Ehninger, Professor of Modern Art History at the Institute of Art and Visual History and director of the Centre for Advanced Study inherit. heritage in transformation at Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, Germany
