The Origins of Photojournalism in America by Michael L. Carlebach

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 197 secret of the surviving iron producers, according to Ingham, lay not in competing with the large steel firms, but in carving out profitable niches for themselves. This might involve, for example, producing specialty items that steel firms would not bother with, or filling customer needs by offering a variety of both iron and steel products. As a consequence, the amount of iron produced in Pittsburgh continued to rise until 1887. So did the number of independent firms as newcomers entered the held. Independent iron and steel produc­ ers held a significant portion of the market as late as the eve of World War II. A few firms persisted into the postwar period. As both iron production and its more tolerant labor relations persisted, so did the social and political dominance of the iron aristocrats in Pittsburgh. Again, it has been assumed that when steel displaced iron, the Pittsburgh managers representing the absentee owners thereafter dictated political life in the city. Further, because the owners had little interest in Pittsburgh except where it affected costs, the city suffered accordingly. Ingham argues to the contrary, showing that the old iron families continued to live and thrive in Pittsburgh and to dominate its social and political life. When political reform became fashionable in the early 20th century, members of the old families, with education, social standing, and presumably inde­ pendence of the steel trust, once more stepped to the fore. Ingham attributes acceptance of their leadership to the old families represent­ ing both the city’s past and its present, tradition and progress, continuity and change. Ingham’s treatment of labor and political matters is especially strong. The work’s least satisfactory feature is its misleading title. Something like “The Persistence of Pittsburgh’s Independent Iron and Steel Masters” would more accurately describe the contents. It is a small objection to an otherwise well-done and important book. Readers of this journal will also find that it deals little with culture. Gerald G. Eggert Dr. Eggert, professor emeritus at Pennsylvania State University, has published Steelmasters and Labor Reform, 1886-1923 (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1981) and Harrisburg Industrializes: The Coming of Factories to an American Community (Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993). The Origins of Photojournalism in America. By Michael L. Carlebach. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992. Pp. x+194; illustrations, glossary, bibliography, index. $29.95 (paper). The title of this book is misleading. It actually is both more and less than a history of American photojournalism. It is more because it really is a history of photography, albeit rather a basic one, describing formats—daguerreotypes, tintypes, and paper prints—as 198 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE well as subject matter—the Civil War and “The West as Photo Opportunity.” It is less because it ignores the history of journalism, providing no discussion of the context into which photographic pictures fit nor any interpretation of how they changed the news media. Michael Carlebach describes the enormous increase and diffusion of photographs in this country between the announcement of Daguerre’s invention in 1839 and the beginnings of the halftone process about 1880 but fails to analyze photography’s role in the information explosion wrought by the 19th-century popular press. Carlebach outlines the history of American photography in suffi­ cient detail for the reader to appreciate the cumbersome early methods and difficulties faced by photographers in the studio and out in the field. He pays homage to these early efforts and makes clear the progression of formats from cased images (daguerreotypes and ambrotypes) to the cheap and popular tintype, and finally the wet-plate glass negative that made the paper print possible. In contrast to many fine-arts studies, Carlebach gives the stereograph its due, and he correctly cites the double-image card format, published by the millions between the 1850s and the 1950s, as a most influential form of photography. As a photojournalist himself, and professor in the School of Communication at the University of Miami, Carlebach apparently regards all such proliferation of pictures asjournalism. I would argue that merely producing photographs for sale, whether Mathew Brady’s portraits or Carleton Watkins’s Yosemite views

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