Americans Through The Lens

The photographs in this book, some nearly 150 years old, chronicle the American people from the last years of slavery & the Civil War to the present.

A close reading of photography yieldls a grounndbreaking cultural biography; reveals photography's impresario, Alfred Stieglitz, as he has never been revealed before and looks at his photographs as they have never been looked at before. In An American Lens, Jay Bochner looks at a series of milestones in the development of the American avant-garde that capture a pivotal period in artistic consciousness. He focuses on the multiple roles of Alfred Stieglitz--as influential gallery owner, photographer, and impresario of the emerging art scene--at a series of significant moments in his career. These close-ups offer a more intense and expanded understanding of the subject than the familiar long view. Bochner uses these scenes to recreate for today's readers the birth of modernism in America--what it was like to be an audience for the art of the early avant-garde. Moving from frame to frame, he shows us, for example, a single photograph by Stieglitz of a snowy night in 1893 and a short description by Stephen Crane of just such a snowfall; the preparation, the reception, and the aftermath of the famous Armory Show of modern art in 1913; Gertrude Stein's portraits in prose; New York at the dawn of Dada, with Paul Strand, Francis Picabia, and others; and the intersecting paths of Mina Loy, William Carlos Williams, and Marcel Duchamp in 1917. Bochner also examines Stieglitz's three great photographic series: his photographs of Georgia O'Keeffe, of clouds, and of skyscrapers. These sections of the book include many Stieglitz photos, including some rarely seen portraits of O'Keeffe. Stieglitz as impresario and artist achieved an almost mythical status, which some recent critics have worked to deflate--casting him, for example, as Svengali to Georgia O'Keeffe's spellbound Trilby. Engaging in neither idolatry nor demolition, Bochner looks instead for the truth about the man and the myth. The scenes from American art in An American Lens create a new version of Stieglitz's biography, allowing us to reread his life and the life of his times by focusing intently on what is visible and not so visible in the art he left behind.

In Asian America Through the Lens, Jun Xing surveys Asian American cinema, allowing its aesthetic, cultural, and political diversity and continuities to emerge.

This is the Student Edition for America Through the Lens, a Grade 11 U.S. History Survey program covering Beginnings to the Present.

National Geographic U.S. History America Through the Lens is a new United States History program for high school. This new program integrates literacy with content knowledge through support for reading, writing, and critical thinking skills. It includes National Geographic Learning's Modified Text feature (on MindTap) providing content at two grades levels below the on-level content. The program presents manageable two- and four-page lessons, following a clear unit-chapter-lesson organization. It views history as an exploration of identity and a celebration of cultural heritage and diversity. Featured in this stunning new program are National Geographic Explorers, along with National Geographic maps, images, and photography.

What is American Indian photography? At the turn of the twentieth century, Edward Curtis began creating romantic images of American Indians, and his works—along with pictures by other non-Native photographers—came to define the field. Yet beginning in the second half of the nineteenth century, American Indians themselves started using cameras to record their daily activities and to memorialize tribal members. Through a Native Lens offers a refreshing, new perspective by highlighting the active contributions of North American Indians, both as patrons who commissioned portraits and as photographers who created collections. In this richly illustrated volume, Nicole Dawn Strathman explores how indigenous peoples throughout the United States and Canada appropriated the art of photography and integrated it into their lifeways. The photographs she analyzes date to the first one hundred years of the medium, between 1840 and 1940. To account for Native activity both in front of and behind the camera, the author divides her survey into two parts. Part I focuses on Native participants, including such public figures as Sarah Winnemucca and Red Cloud, who fashioned themselves in deliberate ways for their portraits. Part II examines Native professional, semiprofessional, and amateur photographers. Drawing from tribal and state archives, libraries, museums, and individual collections, Through a Native Lens features photographs—including some never before published—that range from formal portraits to casual snapshots. The images represent multiple tribal communities across Native North America, including the Inland Tlingit, Northern Paiute, and Kiowa. Moving beyond studies of Native Americans as photographic subjects, this groundbreaking book demonstrates how indigenous peoples took control of their own images and distinguished themselves as pioneers of photography.

"If I could tell the story in words, I wouldn't need to lug around a camera."-Lewis Hine A stunning view of America as captured by groundbreaking photographers American history is punctuated by defining moments-some proud, some tragic, some beautiful. Photography has made it possible for these moments to be captured and shared with the public. As the craft has evolved from unwieldy glass negatives to digital imagery, the photographs themselves have changed the way we see the world. From Mathew Brady's startling Civil War photographs to NASA's stunning images of the universe, America Through the Lens by Martin W. Sandler highlights twelve photographers whose work has truly changed the nation.