History of Photography at the University of Notre Dame: Twentieth Century

This is a first-rate history of photography. Author David Acton uses the extraordinary and wide-ranging collection held by the Snite Museum to bring to life 100 photographs which encompass the 20th century. He tracks the history, artistic concepts, and technical advances of photography, from the Photo-Secession movement, represented by Edward Steichen and Gertrude Käsebier through to the advances in color photography seen in images of Joel Meyerowitz and William Eggleston. The volume provides a striking pictorial history, featuring images of the Great Depression by Farm Security Agency photographers Walker Evans and Arthur Rothstein, of World War II by Robert Capa and W. Eugene Smith, and of the struggles of the Civil Rights movement in the United States during the 1950s and 1960s by Gordon Parks and Danny Lyon.

The shifting styles and emphases of the 20th century are traced via the remarkable photographs of Edward Weston and Ansel Adams as straight photography superseded Pictorialist poetry in the 1930s, via the work of aesthetic photographers Harry Callahan and Aaron Siskind who were influenced by abstract painting, and through the work of street photographers like Garry Winogrand and Diane Arbus who were observing and recording the rapid social and economic changes in American society.

Acton provides historical context, brief biographies, and a glossary of photographic terms. A second volume on 19th-century photographs is planned for 2022. The Snite Museum of Art at the University of Notre Dame is considered to be one of the finest university art museums in America. Its permanent collection of 19th-, 20th-, and 21st-century photography comprises 10,000-plus pieces