Winslow Homer and the Camera

Frank H., III Goodyear, Dana E. Byrd

A revelatory exploration of Winslow Homer's engagement with photography, shedding new light on his celebrated paintings and works on paper. One of the greatest American painters of the 19th century, Winslow Homer (1836-1910) also maintained a deep engagement with photography throughout his career. Focusing on the important, yet often-overlooked, role that photography played in Homer's art, this volume exposes Homer's own experiments with the camera (he first bought one in 1882). It also explores how the medium of photography and the larger visual economy influenced his work as a painter, watercolorist, and printmaker at a moment when new print technologies inundated the public with images. Frank Goodyear and Dana Byrd demonstrate that photography offered Homer new ways of seeing and representing the world, from his early commercial engravings sourced from contemporary photographs to...