Director's foreword -- Preface and acknowledgments -- The pioneering generation : 1839-1843 -- Ideas and inventions -- The daguerreotype in America : 1839 -- Beyond the laboratory : 1840 -- The foundation of a profession : 1841-43 -- Case studies : Southworth & Hawes and John Plumbe -- Leaders in the profession : a regional survey -- Boston and vicinity -- Philadelphia and vicinity -- New York City and State -- The South -- The West -- California and the Pacific Coast -- Being a daguerreotypist -- A new profession -- Secrets of the dark chamber -- At work -- A contentious fraternity -- The daguerreian economy -- Exhibitions and competitions -- The language of light : commerce and art -- The face of a nation -- The cultural importance of portraiture -- The portrait tradition -- Illustrious Americans -- Pictures and things : the human artifact -- High and low : the aesthetics of portraiture -- Daguerreian genres and themes -- The occupational daguerreotype -- Ethnicity and race -- Memorial and postmortem images -- The American scene -- Outdoor views -- Gold and the West -- Comic, allegorical, and artistic works -- End of an era.
The rise of paper photography -- Paper and glass in Europe -- Paper photography in America -- Antebellum America on paper : picture, view, and likeness -- New formats : the stereograph and carte-de-visite -- terrible distinctness" : photography of the Civil War Era, 1861-1865 -- A mass market for pictures -- Photography and the illustrated press -- Brady, Gardner, and the aesthetics of war -- Photography and the military -- End game : victory, trauma, and the war of memory -- Nature and culture : scenic, topographic, and promotional views -- The art of landscape -- The Eastern landscape : scenic and topographic views -- Yosemite and Carleton E. Watkins -- Timothy O'Sullivan and the King and Wheeler surveys -- William Henry Jackson and John K. Hillers : the Hayden and Powell surveys -- A world of photographs -- Napoleon Sarony and the new art of portraiture -- Reality in focus -- Art and invention -- Instantaneous vision -- The dry-plate revolution -- Notes -- Catalogue -- Index.
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