Promotions - Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles 2019 - Humanities — Art & Architecture — Islamic Studies

French photographer, artist, scientist, and explorer Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangery (1804-92) was active in the Mediterranean Near East in the first half of the 19th century, during France's imperialistic expansion into the decaying Ottoman Empire. This excellent work catalogues a winter/spring 2019 exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art of the work of Girault de Prangery. In addition to 127 plates and other illustrations, the volume offers well-researched and well-written essays by Pinson (a curator at the Met) and a host of other scholars. The essays provide biographical, artistic, cultural, social, and political context for Girault de Prangery, who was among the first individuals ever to use the daguerreotype process to create topographical and landscape views, many of them of the remains of ancient civilizations. The book includes helpful maps, lists of key sites and subjects, chronologies, notes, and a thorough bibliography. Most important, of course, are the plates, which are beautifully reproduced from Girault de Prangery's daguerreotypes, and 51 additional related illustrations (lithographs, drawings, and so on) by Girault de Prangery and others from the period. The book provides a unique opportunity to view a sustained body of work by one of the world's first working photographers and to learn about the context for his pioneering photographic work.Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers.

An itinerant, self-taught photographer based in Durham, North Carolina, Hugh Mangum (1877-1922) traveled with his Penny Picture camera through the small towns of North Carolina and Virginia, making inexpensive portraits for anyone who came to his temporary studios. This type of practice hearkens back to the first years of photography in the US, but Mangum worked from 1897 to 1922, which is late for this sort of photography. One usually finds only a few scattered images from the total body of work of these photographers, but thanks to various accidents much, perhaps all, of Mangum's work wound up in an archive, where it has been professionally preserved and managed. Mangum, who was white, photographed both black and white people with the same care. He was able to infuse the rigidly limited boundaries of his craft practice with a gentle, warm, and humane sensibility, which can only readily be seen when enough of his images are brought together. The several essays in this well-researched, well-written volume argue for a moderated understanding of racial relations of the period. Both Sartor and Harris are at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke, and the great care and thought they put into presenting Mangum's work makes this book itself a work of art.Summing Up: Essential. All readers.