Newsfeed
Printer-Friendly ModeLecture series concludes with 19th Century photography, visual imagery
December 5, 2005 —
Dr. John Jezierski delivered the final speech of the 2005 Fall Focus Series: Popular Culture and the Popular Arts with a presentation on 19th Century Photography and its role in forging a unique American identity.
The SVSU history professor, set to retire at the end of the academic year, presented the 3rd Annual Hoffmann-Willertz lecture entitled "A Popular Vision: 19th Century Photography and the Mass Media."
In addition to concluding the Lecture Series, the lecture was also a tribute to William Hoffmann and John Willertz, longtime members of the history department.
Jezierski, who has taught at SVSU since 1970, focused on the photochrom companies that revolutionized the mass production of images.
In its early inception in the mid-19th century, photography was used primarily as a unique art form, or to catch formal sittings of people. By the late 19th Century, however, photochrom companies in Zurich, London, and Detroit had introduced photography to the burgeoning masses in the United States and abroad.
From 1885 to 1925, photography began to transition from the unique to the ubiquitous. At the same time that Kodak founder George Eastman was bringing photography to the masses through cheap cameras, photochrom companies began to present uniquely American messages through the mass media.
Photochrom of Detroit (later the Detroit Photographic Company), headed by E.H. Husher, became the source of tens of millions of pictures that graced everything from postcards to other souvenirs. Since national tensions still lingered from the aftermath of the Civil War, Photochrom of Detroit sought to heal some of the fissures with pictures of historical figures like George Washington, national sites such as Gettysburg, and other famous sites that evoked the "mystic cords of memory."
In addition, many of the images also helped Native Americans to reconnect with their past. While most of the Native American culture had been stamped out by the advent of the photochrom companies, new photographs helped Native Americans to reconnect with their past. The photo companies also showed African Americans, however in a decidedly more negative light, which often relied upon old stereotypes of blacks.
However, Jezierski kept returning to the theme of the Fall Focus series throughout his lecture: pop culture.
Arguing that visual imagery is the essence of popular culture, Jezierski pointed out that it is the visibility of pop culture that makes it so attractive and popular to mass audiences.
"Pop culture usually finds us, rather than us pursuing it," Jezierski said.