Between 1854 and 1900, photography flourished as a form of book illustration in the United States, employing the authority and novelty of photography to meet the interests of writers and publishers. Within short order, photographic illustration had been adapted to a large number of contexts, from scientific documentation to artistic expression, from the celebration of civic pride to the commemoration of the dead. Photography was used as a form of illustration in nearly every genre of book, sometimes in conjunction with engravings, sometimes alone. The most common genres are probably view vooks and biographies, but novels, event programmes, broadsides, histories, city directories, and occasional works appeared with mounted photographs.
Over 500 titles were published during the 19th century using actual photographs as illustration. While some of these might include only a frontispiece portrait of the author or subject of the narrative, others were illustrated with hundreds of images, each painstakingly, individually mounted on the pages before binding. For a bibliographer, the task of identifying these works is daunting. Not only are photographs not specifically noted in most standard bibliographic descriptions, but due to the cost of production, many volumes were issued in exceptionally short press runs, while others were issued in several forms, varying in the number and composition of photographs, or issued in parallel editions, the deluxe edition containing photographs, the standard without. Adding to the complexity, in a small number of cases, photographs were incorporated into the binding.
By the 1880s, the economics of the publishing industry began to eliminate mounted photographs from the market. Advances in photomechanical technology enabled book-ready images to be mass produced achieving the authority of photographic representation at lower cost. Furthermore, several photomechanical processes allowed images to be printed directly onto regular paper stock, which could be therefore be incorporated into the text more easily, efficiently, and quickly. The introduction of half-tone technology in 1888 struck a particular blow to the use of actual photographs in books due to its particularly low cost. Since that time, photographic-illustration has been virtually restricted to artistic or specialty works in which higher production costs can be offset by the higher retail prices requested.
The Currier-McCombs Division houses a large and actively growing collection of American photographically-illustrated books. A partial inventory of its holdings has been posted to the web site which lists published works in the Clements' collections that feature mounted photographs as a regular part of production (e.g. not extra-illustrated volumes). The inventory also contains a few titles illustrated with photomechanical processes (collotypes, carbon prints, woodburytypes, heliotypes, autoglyphs, photogravures of various types, and half-tone), which represent either the first use of that technology (when known) or typical examples from the period.
Connect to the index for
1854-1869
1870-1884
1885-1900
The curator of the Division is seeking to create a comprehensive bibliography of American photographically-illustrated books published before 1900, including all works published in North America or about North American subjects. The list currently contains approximately 300 titles; please contact the Curator if you wish to contribute information to the project.
