Developing Animals: Wildlife and Early American Photography - Softcover

Brower, Matthew

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0816654794 ISBN 13: 9780816654796

Publisher: Univ Of Minnesota Press, 2011

Synopsis

Pictures of animals are now ubiquitous, but the ability to capture animals on film was a significant challenge in the early era of photography. In Developing Animals, Matthew Brower takes us back to the time when Americans started taking pictures of the animal kingdom, at the beginning of the twentieth century, the moment when photography became a mass medium and wildlife photography an increasingly popular genre.

Developing Animals compellingly investigates the way photography changed our perception of animals. Brower analyzes how photographers created new ideas about animals as they moved from taking pictures of taxidermic specimens in so-called natural settings to the emergence of practices such as camera hunting, which made it possible to capture images of creatures in the wild.

By combining approaches in visual cultural studies and the history of photography, Developing Animals goes further to argue that photography has been essential not only to the understanding of wildlife but also to the conceptual separation of humans and animals.

About this title

About the Author

Matthew Brower is curator of the University of Toronto Art Centre and a lecturer in museum studies in the Faculty of Information at the University of Toronto.

Edition details

• Publisher: Univ Of Minnesota Press
• Publication date: 2011
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0816654794
• ISBN 13: 9780816654796
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256