Art and the early photographic album

Studies in the History of Art, Volume 77. This is a publication by the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts (CASVA), the Gallery's research institute. The development of photography from the mid-nineteenth century onward transformed the conditions of appreciation, marketing, and distribution of works of art. The role of the photographic album in this history has not been previously explored in a published study. Here, in twelve collected essays, scholars discuss the many different types of albums that were pioneers in this change, the photographic processes they represent, and their relationship to older reproductive media, with examples drawn mainly from nineteenth-century France, Great Britain, and Germany.