| Description |
xvi, 286 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm |
| Contents |
Racial-type photographs in the Colonial period -- The degenerate face: nineteenth-century prison photographs -- The eugenics movement begins : Galton and the races of Britain -- Building a healthy nation : eugenic images in the United States, 1890-1935 -- Creating the master race: photography and the racial selection in Germany --Sub-human versus the master race: racial-type photographs and Nazi party propaganda -- Eugenics under fire: the racial-type imagery of Boas, Du Bois, Huxley and Hadden |
| Summary |
"This book makes a significant contribution to an underexamined and important topic. Eugenics had an immense (mainly negative) impact on twentieth-century social and political history, and as Anne Maxwell demonstrates this was in large part because of its use of modern visual technologies, particularly photography. This story should not be allowed to disappear from cultural memory and Anne Maxwell's careful and path-breaking scholarship will do much to keep it there:'"-Simon During, Johns Hopkins University -- |
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"This examination of the influence of photography on the eugenics movement adds an important chapter to the history of better breeding. She notes that in the early 1900's the photograph was seen as capturing reality and revealing truth. The eugenic mug shot, the favourite type of picture used by proponents, refrained reality for those persons already troubled by the social disruption caused by rapid industrialization, and frightened by the increasing number of immigrants who arrived to work in industrial factories. Eugenicists played to the emotions of the white Anglo-Saxon Protestants who feared that they were losing control of their world. Recommended."-Choice -- |
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Picture Imperfect documents and critically analyses the photographs that helped strengthen as well as bring down the eugenics movement. Using a large body of racial-type images and a variety of historical and archival sources, and concentrating mainly on developments in Britain, the USA and Nazi Germany, this book explains how photography, as the most powerful visual medium of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, was vital to the eugenics movement's success û not only did it allow eugenicists to identify the people with superior and inferior hereditary traits, but it helped publicise and lend scientific authority to eugenicists' racial theories. -- |
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Picture Imperfect looks at eugenics from the standpoint of its most significant cultural data û racial-type photography, investigating the techniques, media forms, and styles of photography used by eugenicists, and relating these to their racial theories and their social policies and goals. It demonstrates how the visual archive was crucially constitutive of eugenic racial science because it helped make many of its concepts appear both intuitive as well as scientifically legitimate. --Book Jacket |
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The author argues for a strong connection between the racial-type photographs that eugenicists created and the photographic images produced by nineteenth-century anthropologists and prison authorities, and how the photographic works of contemporary liberal anthropologists played a significant role in the eugenics movement's downfall. Besides adding to our knowledge of photography's crucial role in helping to authorise and implement some of the most controversial social policies of modern times, this book makes a major contribution to our understanding of the history of racism. -- |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references and index |
| Subject |
Eugenics -- History -- 19th century.
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Eugenics -- History -- 20th century.
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Photography -- Social aspects -- History -- 19th century.
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Photography -- Social aspects -- History -- 20th century.
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| ISBN |
1845194152 |
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9781845194154 |
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