| "This
is a book which is at once profound and amusing—a rare combination.
The authors have successfully attempted to explore a variety of photographic
humor: humor about photography and humor with photography. On a popular
level, the book is just plain funny and can be appreciated by anyone
who likes a good laugh. For the historian of photography and society,
it is an unrivaled compendium of the ways in which photography has
made us so uncomfortable as to require a joke to relieve the tension."—Jay
Ruby, Temple University
In the year that photography was introduced to the world, 1839,
a cartoon in a French broadside showed a gallows for the draftsmen
and engravers who would be put out of work by the new medium. This
was only the beginning of a long tradition of amused, and amusing,
depictions of photography, a practice now reviewed in Heinz and
Bridget Henisch's new book.
Positive Pleasures explores the humorous commentary about
photography that emerged in the medium's first seventy-five years,
providing a panorama of photographic comedy in its many aspects,
both pictorial and literary. The Henisches present a wide range
of examples found in cartoons, literature, and such facets of popular
culture as music, fashion, and advertising. They also discuss examples
of photo-humor in the political arena.
Richly illustrated with more than 250 cartoons and photographs
from international sources, the book takes readers behind the technical
and commercial scenes of a new medium. It covers the period from
photography's beginnings to the years following World War I when
the popularization of miniature cameras redefined the world of photography—showing
how, as the outward appearance of photographic paraphernalia changed,
each new generation of cartoonists was provided with new challenges
for their satirical skills. It also depicts photographers as humorists
in their own right through examples of their amusing interpretations
of reality.
Viewed today, these cartoons and anecdotes shed new light on photography's
problems and pleasures as seen by society at large and prove that
it is not necessary to be a photo-historian in order to appreciate
photographic humor. Positive Pleasures firmly establishes
photo-humor as an important part of social and visual anthropology
and should stimulate new research by social scientists. It will
also delight anyone with an interest in social history or the nineteenth-century
world, as it deepens our understanding of both photography's impact
on society and the impact of fads and fashions on photography itself. |
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Heinz
K. Henisch is Emeritus Professor of the History of Photography
at Penn State, the founding editor of History of Photography, and
a Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain.
Bridget A. Henisch is the author of Fast and Feast: Food
in Medieval Society (1976).
Together
they co-authored The Photographic Experience, 1839-1914: Images
and Attitudes (1994) and The Painted Photograph, 1839-1914:
Origins, Techniques, Aspirations (1996), both from Penn State. |
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