A Communion of Shadows: Religion and Photography in Nineteenth-Century America

When the revolutionary technology of photography erupted in American culture in 1839, it swiftly became, in the day’s parlance, a “mania.” This richly illustrated book positions vernacular photography at the center of the study of nineteenth-century American religious life. As an empirical tool, photography captured many of the signal scenes of American life, from the gold rush to the bloody battlefields of the Civil War. But photographs did not simply display neutral records of people, pla...