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Iron Muse

Photographing the Transcontinental Railroad
by Glenn Willumson (Author)
eBook
Price: $45.00 / £38.00
Publication Date: Nov 2023
Edition: 1st Edition
Title Details:
Rights: World
Pages: 254
ISBN: 9780520955424
Trim Size: 7 x 10
Illustrations: 8 color photos, 88 b/w photos, 1 map
Endowments:
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About the Book

The construction of the transcontinental railroad (1865–1869) marked a milestone in United States history, symbolizing both the joining of the country’s two coasts and the taming of its frontier wilderness by modern technology. But it was through the power of images—and especially the photograph—that the railroad attained its iconic status. Iron Muse provides a unique look at the production, distribution, and publication of images of the transcontinental railroad: from their use as an official record by the railroad corporations, to their reproduction in the illustrated press and travel guides, and finally to their adaptation to direct sales and albums in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Tracing the complex relationships and occasional conflicts between photographer, publisher, and curator as they crafted the photographs’ different meanings over time, Willumson provides a comprehensive portrayal of the creation and evolution of an important slice of American visual culture.


The construction of the transcontinental railroad (1865–1869) marked a milestone in United States history, symbolizing both the joining of the country’s two coasts and the taming of its frontier wilderness by modern technology. But it was through the powe

About the Author

Glenn Willumson is Director of the Graduate Program in Museum Studies and Professor of Art History at the University of Florida.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. Preparing the Ground
2. Making the Photographs
3. Curating the Archive
4. Reproducing the Image

Epilogue

Notes
Selected Bibliography
List of Illustrations
Index

Reviews

"This meticulous investigation will appeal to historians of photography, of the American West, and of railroads. . . . Recommended."
— CHOICE
"A detailed, well-researched analysis of the photography associated with the transcontinental railroad."
— Western Historical Quarterly
"Glenn Willumson's book Iron Muse is a wonderfully written account of efforts to photograph the constuction of the transcontinental railroad and promote its successes... Wonderfully illustrated, this book relies on the larger visual culture of the era and reproduces prints, paintings, and newspapers as well as the photographs themselves...  Those without a stated interest in these topics will develop one because of the author's engaging writing style and compelling presentation."
— Winterthur Portfolio
“One way to approach Glenn Willumson’s impressive book is to imagine yourself standing on the observation platform of a train speeding westward in 1868. Already disappearing from view are traditional ideas about the function of documentary photography, while at the other end of the train, precariously balanced on the cab of the locomotive, a photographer shoots pictures that show how successfully construction of the Transcontinental railroad is proceeding through the rugged western landscape. Willumson’s thoughtful, carefully researched narrative works between these two views of railroad photography, explaining how the passive was gradually being supplanted by the active, but not quite so openly or aggressively as to suggest that the railroad’s record of progress was any less authentic. Which tells us, once again, how effective such images were in selling the nineteenth-century West to the eastern half of the nation.”

-William Truettner, Senior Curator of Painting and Sculpture at the Smithsonian American Art Museum

“One comes away from this text with deeper appreciation of the production of these railroad images and of their manipulation, indeed with a heightened appreciation of the richness of the photographic archive itself."

-Kenneth Haltman, author of Looking Close and Seeing Far: Samuel Seymour, Titian Ramsay Peale, and the Art of the Long Expedition, 1818-1823