‘These fragile and delicate images produced by a small army of intrepid photographers and their assistants bestow a totally unique legacy on modern scholarship … a beautiful and very worthwhile book’ – State of Art

Antiquity & Photography explores the influence of photography on archaeology between 1840 and 1880. This was the period that saw the evolution of archaeology as a professional discipline as well as the rapid growth of the new photographic medium.

With superb illustrations drawn from the collections of the Getty Museum and the Getty Research Institute, the essays in this book examine the growth of archaeology as a scientific discipline and its increasing reliance on photographic documentation, and they consider some of the conventions that came to govern the ostensibly objective photographs of antiquities and ancient sites.

Biographical essays explore the careers of two major early photographers, Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey and William James Stillman. In addition, portfolios with works by Maxime Du Camp, John Beasley Greene, Francis Frith, Robert Macpherson, Adolphe Braun, and others testify to the strength and consistency of other early photographers who captured the antique worlds around the Mediterranean.

Also of interest
The Invention of Photography: The First Fifty Years
In the Darkroom: An Illustrated Guide to Photographic Processes before the Digital Age