Description
Book SynopsisExamines three projects in late nineteenth-century scientific photography: the endeavors of Alphonse Bertillon, Francis Galton, and Etienne-Jules Marey. Develops new theoretical perspectives on the history of photographic technology, as well as the history of scientific imaging more generally.
Trade Review“Reasoned and Unreasoned Images is a fascinating discussion of photography in the second half of the nineteenth century. Josh Ellenbogen raises interesting questions concerning the nature of evidence that are still being discussed in current work on the philosophy of science and, in particular, the philosophy of experiment. In short, this is a first-rate piece of scholarship, with the additional bonus that it is a good read.”
—Allan D. Franklin,University of Colorado, Boulder
“Josh Ellenbogen offers a truly unique treatment of the nature of scientific uses of photography at the turn of the nineteenth century, one that will certainly be debated but whose value will lie in the specificity of its analysis and the originality of its argument. This will be an influential book, dealing with many contemporary issues in our understanding of photographic evidence and revealing their historical background. It has already influenced my own thinking.”
—Tom Gunning,University of Chicago
“Josh Ellenbogen’s Reasoned and Unreasoned Images provides a significant theoretical discussion of photography’s aim to capture the visible and nonvisible and, more widely, of its complex relation to human perception, cognition, and memory. . . .
[T]he journey the reader undertakes is guided by thought-provoking questions through a series of chapters that progressively build upon the previous one to form a layered work of interwoven arguments that cannot easily be pulled apart.”
—Tania Woloshyn CAA Reviews
“As an intellectual history of a period scientific use of photography, Reasoned and Unreasoned Images is a rich and thorough account. There is much to be learned from its careful unpacking of the intellectual correspondences of Bertillon, Galton, and Marey and the development of a scientific understanding of photography and vision that resulted.”
—Blake Stimson History of Photography
“[This] book is an instructive and useful read and serves the purpose of bringing together the philosophy of experiment and period photographic theory, with fascinating results.”
—Kelley Wilder Isis: Journal of the History of Science Society
Table of ContentsContents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part 1: Criminality, Identity, and the “Unreasoned Image”
1 “To Fix the Human Personality”: Archived Bodies and Ideal Lenses
2 Mnemonic Economies or Galleries of Paintings
3 Educated Eyes and Moments of Repose
Part 2: Portraits of the Invisible
4 The Monstrous, the Meaningless, and Margins of Error
5 “The Basis of a Very High Order of Artistic Work”
6 Images and Antecedents
Part 3: Camera and Mind
7 Making Sense
8 Creatures of Reason
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
