Description
Book SynopsisExamines the work of the photographer Alexander Gardner and explores transatlantic dialogues in American Civil War–era photography, demonstrating the concern over issues such as photography as a documentary form, the meaning of democracy, and the impact of industrialization on labor and social relations.
Trade Review“Elevate the Masses takes a fresh look at the career of Alexander Gardner by focusing on his social and photographic work in his home country of Scotland and situating that work in a transatlantic discourse on political rights and reform. The book’s reconsideration of Gardner's photographs in the context of the US Civil War promises to shift how scholars think about this well-studied area of photography's history.”
—Tanya Sheehan,author of Study in Black and White: Photography, Race, Humor
“Alexander Gardner's pathbreaking photography developed from long-term commitments to democracy and social reform, mixed with shrewd enterprise. Makeda Best's transatlantic biographical frame shapes stimulating readings of enduring images.”
—Thomas J. Brown,author of Civil War Monuments and the Militarization of America
“Drawing on Gardner’s artisan and immigrant identities and his writing in the Glasgow newspaper he owned, Best connects the photographer's sociopolitical views to Chartism and other European reform movements. Using this international perspective, she provides fresh insight into Gardner's Civil War photographs, which have been read mostly as American expression and commercial opportunism. Best draws meaningful parallels between the communicative role and strategies of progressive newspapers and those of Gardner’s paper-based photography, and she repositions his best-known work, Photographic Sketch Book of the War (1866; republished, 1959), as a political project and innovative visual form.”
—A. Luxenberg Choice
“Through Best’s deliberate and revelatory analysis, Gardner’s belief in transformative social change, and in photography’s power to envision this, is brought forth.”
—Jennifer Raab CAA.Reviews
Table of ContentsList of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Elevate the Masses
1 The Fierce Flames of Democracy
2 Remove the Foul Blot
3 Labor’s Portrait Gallery
4 Washington’s Promise
Conclusion: Convince the Understanding, Arouse the Conscience
Notes
Index
