Truthful Pictures

Truthful Pictures examines novels and sermons written in the antebellum South, in particular those written after the 1851 publication of Uncle Tom's Cabin. It begins with a historical overview of the function of women writers in American literature in order to help locate sentimental fiction within its historical context by analyzing the works of Southern female authors such as Caroline Hentz and Mary H. Eastman. Though they followed in Harriet Beecher Stowe's footsteps, authors like Hentz and Eastman used their voices in conjunction with Christian ideology to support slavery. The text then explores how Holy Scripture was perverted in Southern sermons by pulpit leaders such as Thorton Stringfellow and Alexander McCaine in order to allow the continued enslavement of one group by another, using religion to defend white partriarchy as the normal human way of life. By examining antebellum sermons and writings and their influence on sentimental novels, Truthful Pictures shows how religious texts reinforced political ideologies in the wake of increasing racial tensions between the North and the South. Book jacket.

For decades, people have made certain assumptions about photographs, the primary one being that they are truthful in depicting reality. While this is true in many cases, it is not always so. This book traces the rise of photography’s perceived veracity. It shows why a combination of pre-knowledge of early developments in imagery, a persistent marketing campaign espousing the accuracy of photographs and a perception by users that what they got from their photographs was an accurate depiction acted to create the belief in the photograph’s veracity. The book uses philosophy, physiology, psychology and photography to tell this story and concludes by describing a system of identification that could be used to separate images that are not always what they seem. The turbulence caused to photography with the introduction of digital imaging is described and is the impetus for the beginning of the discussion about where photography sits today amongst other images.

Reproduction of the original: Pictures Every Child Should Know by Dolores Bacon

Pictures and conversations : photographic meaning -- Liddell girls : Alice and her sisters -- Pretty boys and little men : becoming a boy -- Theatrical transformations : fancy dress -- In fairyland : partial dress and the nude.

Volume contains "6 plates: 1 Woodburytype of the moon, 2 Lichtpaus specimens on 1 plate, 1 Scamoni Relief Heliogravure, 1 Scamoni Intaglio Heliogravure, 2 Glazed Obernetter Collotypes on 1 plate, [and] 1 Photolithograph of a map by S.H. Parkins. The plates are printed by the Woodburytype Permanent Photographic Printing Co., London; Obernetter, Munich; Scamoni, St. Petersburg."--Hanson Collection catalog, p. 54.