The History of Photography: From 1839 to the Present

Newhall's history is a broad essay written with a firmly modernist point of view. Newhall's concern is art photography, or at least, as he told me, "...why write about photography that is not beautiful?" My answer is the important role that advertising and other genres of photography have played in our history taken more broadly.

It is important to note that the various printings of this edition are significantly different in image reproduction. This copy printed in the Netherlands has excellent reproduction. Another copy with the same ISBN, and apparently from the same plates is on different paper with noticeably inferior reproduction.

Illustrated with 163 photographic plates (1 in color),Published by Museum of Modern Art, NY, USA, 1949,1st Edition, 1949, Hardcover with Dustjacket,Hardcover with dustjacket. 256 pages. Art historian, Beaumont Newhall (1908-1993), was the first director of the Photography Department of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. He wrote this comprehensive book in 1949, and it has become a classic in the field of photographic history.It includes photos by Daguerre, Talbot, Brady, Nadar, Muybridge, Atget, Stieglitz, Steichen, Strand, Man Ray, Moholy-Nagy, Weston, Hine, Adams, Brassai, Abbott, Brandt, Evans, Lange, Cartier-Bresson, and many more

The everyman's beginning book to learn about the medium.