Synopses & Reviews
Six hundred thousand lives were lost between 1861 and 1865, making the conflict between North and South the nationandrsquo;s deadliest war. If the andldquo;War Between the Statesandrdquo; was the test of the young republicandrsquo;s commitment to its founding precepts, it was also a watershed in photographic history, as the camera recorded the epic, heartbreaking narrative from beginning to endandmdash;providing those on the home front, for the first time, with immediate visual access to the horrors of the battlefield.
Photography and the American Civil War features both familiar and rarely seen images that include haunting battlefield landscapes strewn with bodies, studio portraits of armed Confederate and Union soldiers (sometimes in the same family) preparing to meet their destiny, rare multi-panel panoramas of Gettysburg and Richmond, languorous camp scenes showing exhausted troops in repose, diagnostic medical studies of wounded soldiers who survived the warandrsquo;s last bloody battles, and portraits of both Abraham Lincoln and his assassin, John Wilkes Booth.
Published on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the battle of Gettysburg (1863), this beautifully produced book features Civil War photographs by George Barnard, Mathew Brady, Alexander Gardner, Timothy Oandrsquo;Sullivan, and many others.
Review
and#8220;Splendid . . . a wonderful enhancement of the show itself.and#8221;and#8212;New York Review of Books
Review
and#8220;This is now the definitive source for our visual knowledge of the war and especially of its participants. Rosenheimand#8217;s focus on portraiture of soldiers humanizes long-familiar post-battlefield images of bloating corpses. His writing is crisp and full of detail. Best of all, the catalogue doesnand#8217;t just recount the photography of the war, it suggests how photography of the Civil War has influenced American art ever since.and#8221;and#8212;Tyler Green,and#160;Modern Art Notes
Synopsis
This eye-opening study of Civil War photography traces the introduction of the camera into the battlefield and shows its influence on history and our responses to war.
Synopsis
An unprecedented overview of the early work of a preeminent 20th-century artist Diane Arbus (1923-1971) is one of the most distinctive and provocative artists of the twentieth century. Her photographs of children and eccentrics, couples and circus performers, female impersonators and nudists, are among the most recognizable images of our time. This book is the definitive study of the artist's first seven years of work, from 1956 to 1962. Drawn primarily from the rich holdings of the Metropolitan Museum's Diane Arbus Archive--a remarkable treasury of photographs, negatives, appointment books, notebooks, and correspondence--it is an essential contribution to our understanding of Arbus and her oeuvre.
diane arbus: in the beginning showcases over 100 of the artist's early photographs, more than half of which are published here for the first time. The book provides a crucial, in-depth presentation of the artist's genesis, showing Arbus as she developed her evocative and often haunting imagery. The photographs featured in this handsome volume reveal an artist defining her style, honing her subject matter, and in full possession of the many gifts for which she is now recognized the world over.
About the Author
Jeff Rosenheim is curator in charge in the department of photographs at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.