1st Edition
Capturing Japan in Nineteenth-Century New England Photography Collections
Biography
Eleanor M. Hight is Professor of Art History at the University of New Hampshire. She was the co-editor with Gary D. Sampson of Colonialist Photography: Imag(in)ing Race and Place (2004).
'Hight [...] offers a perceptive, multifaceted study of photographs made in Japan in the 1870s-80s...This book is important both for its Japanese subject and for its wider implications for the history of photography. Extensive notes and bibliography... Highly recommended. Lower-level undergraduates through researchers/faculty.' Choice
'The book [...] is well-designed and beautifully illustrated with many examples of nineteenth-century photographs, including eleven colour plates reproducing hand-coloured photographs and one showing the collector’s album cover... Capturing Japan in Nineteenth-Century New England Photography Collections is an entertaining, informative, and highly readable account of an important facet of American Cultural History.' Historical Journal of Massachusetts
'Eleanor M. Hight offers an intriguing addition to the growing body of literature on early Japanese photography... Hight’s book draws on a rich archive of previously understudied primary source material: the photographs, albums, letters, and travelogues of six early visitors to Japan... the book is a welcome contribution to the literature. Hight’s highly readable text provides a clear and concise summary of Yokohama photography and its primary themes. It raises a number of provocative questions regarding the roles played by the consumers of the images, both in shaping the market within Japan and in shaping the perceptions of audiences back home, and ultimately opens up a number of further avenues of inquiry into this very rich material.' History of Photography
