Images of the West
Subtitle: survey photography in french collections, 1860-1880
By: Edited by Francois Brunet and Bronwyn Griffith ; Essays by Francois Brunet and Mick Gidley.
Contributors: Brunet, Francois.; Griffith, Bronwyn.
Publisher: Musee d'Art Americain Giverny/Terra Foundation for American Art; Musée d'Art Américain; Terra Foundation for American Art; Distributed by the University of Chicago Press
Published: 2007
Place of publication: Chicago
Language: eng
Number of pages: 135
ISBN-13: 9780932171542
Subjects: Photography -- West (U.S.) -- History -- Exhibitions; Photographers -- West (U.S.) -- Exhibitions; West (U.S.) -- Pictorial works -- Exhibitions
Genres: Pictorial works
Description: As American settlement expanded westward in the 1860s, the U.S. government undertook large-scale investigations of its new territories. Images of the West: Survey Photography in French Collections, 1860-1880 presents memorable glass-plate photographs from these federal surveys. The selection includes breathtaking views of such iconic sites as Yosemite, as well as lesser-known ethnographic portraits taken by Timothy H. O'Sullivan, William H. Jackson, and William Bell, among others. The accompanying essays discuss how the photographs were used to promote white settlement, how their distribution at home and abroad contributed to the aggrandizement of the American West, and how the exploitative ideology underlying the use of photography extended to attitudes toward both American landscapes and American Indians. The images are all drawn from French public collections, which hold an astonishing number of these U.S. survey photographs. Accompanying an exhibition at the Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, Images of the West provides a critical new examination of a bygone era.
Notes: "Images of the West: Survey Photography in French Collections, 1860-1880 held at the Musee d'Art Americain Giverny/Terra Foundation for American Art : Chicago, 2007 from July 10 to October 31, 2007."

Includes bibliographical references and index.