- Hardcover: 240 pages
- Publisher: Princeton University Press; illustrated edition edition (22 Dec 2003)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 069111515X
- ISBN-13: 978-0691115153
- Product Dimensions: 28.7 x 25.6 x 3 cm
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,374,459 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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While considering the content of the pictures and the writing that accompanied many of them, Nickel discusses the social forces that surrounded and shaped Frith and his photography, such as his Quaker upbringing and the close relationship between science and religion in Victorian England. Exemplary documentation and well-written descriptions of Frith's photographic processes are also remarkable. -- Library Journal
Stating that Frith's photographs . . . would be better regarded if photographic history were taught as a history of ideas rather than a history of art practices or scientific discoveries, Nickel presents nearly 200 pages of carefully considered and well-written discussion about the cultural and intellectual backgrounds of Frith's time and their resonances within Frith's own life and in his 1850s photographs. . . . The reproductions are excellent and close to the originals. -- Choice
Nickel fully establishes a coherent and relevant context for an evaluation of Frith's life and work. A lucid narrative and studied selection of works anchor the volume. -- Gareth Harris, The Art Newspaper
This volume is a significant addition to scholarship of religious publishing and economic history that deserves faithful reading. -- Candy Gunther Brown, Journal of Religion
Stating that Frith's photographs . . . would be better regarded if photographic history were taught as a history of ideas rather than a history of art practices or scientific discoveries, Nickel presents nearly 200 pages of carefully considered and well-written discussion about the cultural and intellectual backgrounds of Frith's time and their resonances within Frith's own life and in his 1850s photographs. . . . The reproductions are excellent and close to the originals. -- Choice
Nickel fully establishes a coherent and relevant context for an evaluation of Frith's life and work. A lucid narrative and studied selection of works anchor the volume. -- Gareth Harris, The Art Newspaper
This volume is a significant addition to scholarship of religious publishing and economic history that deserves faithful reading. -- Candy Gunther Brown, Journal of Religion
Product Description
In 1856, the English photographer Francis Frith set out on the first of three tours of Egypt and the Holy Lands. Traveling up the Nile and then on to the Sinai, Palestine, Syria, and Lebanon, Frith systematically crafted exquisite pictures of ruins, landscapes, and legendary sites. He then published his views in England and America in a variety of formats, becoming something of a celebrity in photographic circles. This book, the first to place Frith's Egyptian and Levantine images in cultural context, reveals the distinct meanings these ostensibly "topographic" pictures held for the photographer and his Victorian audience.
A Quaker by birth and an entrepreneur by nature, Frith brought to his photographic projects a sense of mission: to revive and confirm the stories of the Bible, while offering the region to armchair travelers as a seamless Oriental milieu of Romantic reverie. Francis Frith in Egypt and Palestine narrates the political, intellectual, and social concerns that make Frith representative of England's encounter with the East in the nineteenth century. Historian of photography Douglas R. Nickel brings a sophisticated interdisciplinary approach to bear on the subject in order to expose the complexity of Frith's image-making, setting the photographs against a Victorian backdrop of religious debate, imperialist thought, Romantic philosophy, and Pre-Raphaelite aesthetics.
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Amazon.com:
4.0 out of 5 stars (2 customer reviews)
8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Dry text ..... Great Images, 15 April 2004
By Neil Klemek "mi5@aol.com" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Francis Frith in Egypt and Palestine: A Victorian Photographer Abroad (Hardcover)
The text reads like a dry, doctoral dissertation that makes me thankful I didn't become a college professor. Passages like the following are prevalent throughout the book : "Moving from science to theology to philosophy and the intellectual history of the period, we can see how his photographic productions were explicitly motivated by the categorical imperative of religious faith." After translating this into "His images were based largely on his strong religious beliefs," you can, after some difficulty, get through the extremely burdensome text. The text also goes on multipe tangents trying to explain Victorian England, and the milieu that Frith lived in, but I found it overly burdensome and digressing.I found myself constantly trying to skip ahead of lengthy passages about Darwin's The Origin of Species and other digressing digressions.The best aspect of the book is the images themselves. They are superbly produced with about as much detail from Frith's gigantic glass plates as I could expect a book to have. Frith was a rich man by the time he took his trips to the Middle East, and, whatever his motivations were, these images are historically important as well as having that Middle Eastern mystery I find fascinating. I wished that Nickel would have placed BOTH pairs of Frith's stereo slides into the book, rather than just one side and I also wish he had more images.
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
excellent writing, impressive scholarship, 16 Aug 2004
By reader 6 - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Francis Frith in Egypt and Palestine: A Victorian Photographer Abroad (Hardcover)
Though nicely illustrated, this is no mere picture book. Its real strength lies in its well written text and critical apparatus. Nickel's scholarship is impressive: the book combines a sophisticated approach to writing biography (Frith's) with just enough historical detail and Victorian cultural context to bring the ideas to life. Best suited to audiences operating above a fifth-grade reading level.
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