George Eastman House "Camera: The History of Photography from Daguerreotype to Digital"

The George Eastman House International Museum of Photography & Film, the world’s oldest museum of photography, has published an overview history of photography spanning the medium from its creation, through to the digital era. “Camera: The History of Photography from Daguerreotype to Digital” (Sterling Innovation, 2009, 368 pp., List Price $45)

One of the nice features of this volume, especially for photographers and equipment fetishists, is the pairing of particular photographs with the camera used to take them. For example, the Delta Reflex that Alvin Langdon Coburn used to  photograph “The Flat Iron Building, Evening”:

Alvin Langdon Coburn - The Flat Iron Building, Evening, 1911

Joe Rosenthal’s “Speed Graphic”, used to take the Pulitzer Prize-winning image of the flag raising reenactment at Iwo Jima:

Joe Rosenthal - Flag Raising Iwo Jima, February 23, 1945

“While choosing collection items for the book, it was continually exciting to access the Eastman House archives, which feature both the images and the cameras that together tell the story of the history of photography,” said Todd Gustavson, author of Camera and the Eastman House curator of technology. “This is the first time a book has showcased photographic history in this way, illustrating a photograph next to the camera that took the image, either the exact model or in most cases the actual camera.”

PhotographyUncapped’s Amazon store has “Camera: The History of Photography from Daguerreotype to Digital” (Sterling Innovation, 2009, 368 pp., List Price $45) available a a great discount from the List Price, currently $27.00:

An excellent gift item? Surely.

New perspectives on what we think we already know are always welcome and enlightening.

Enjoy.