Photographic Presidents: Making History from Daguerreotype to Digital

by Cara A. Finnegan

Overview

Defining the Chief Executive via flash powder and selfie sticks

Lincoln’s somber portraits. Lyndon Johnson’s swearing in. George W. Bush’s reaction to learning about the 9/11 attacks. Photography plays an indelible role in how we remember and define American presidents. Throughout history, presidents have actively participated in all aspects of photography, not only by sitting for photos but by taking and consuming them. Cara A. Finnegan ventures from a newly-discovered daguerreotype of John Quincy Adams to Barack Obama’s selfies to tell the stories of how presidents have participated in the medium’s transformative moments. As she shows, technological developments not only changed photography, but introduced new visual values that influence how we judge an image. At the same time, presidential photographs—as representations of leaders who symbolized the nation—sparked public debate on these values and their implications.

An original journey through political history, Photographic Presidents reveals the intertwined evolution of an American institution and a medium that continues to define it.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780252043796
Publisher:	University of Illinois Press
Publication date:	05/18/2021
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	296
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 7.50(d)

About the Author

Cara A. Finnegan is a professor of communication at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She is the author of Making Photography Matter: A Viewer’s History from the Civil War to the Great Depression and Picturing Poverty: Print Culture and FSA Photographs.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction 1

Part I The Daguerreotype Presidents

1 Photographing George Washington 9

2 Early Daguerreotypes in the U.S. and the Nations Capital 26

3 John Quincy Adams and National Portraiture 35

Part II The Snapshot President

4 Handheld Photography and the Halftone Revolution 65

5 William McKinley's Last Photographs 80

Part III The Candid Camera Presidents

6 Visual News in the Early Twentieth Century 111

7 Herbert Hoover, Franklin Roosevelt, and the Candid Camera 123

Part IV The Social Media President

8 Changing Visual Media from the Mid-Twentieth Century to the Digital Age 155

9 Barack Obama and Flickr 169

Conclusion: The Portrait Makes Our President 203

Notes 207

Selected Bibliography 263

Index 267

Color images follow page 108

Editorial Reviews

02/01/2021

Finnegan (Making Photography Matter), a professor of communication at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, demonstrates in this captivating work how photographs of U.S. presidents both shape public experience and have served as catalysts for “dramatic transformations” in the history of photography. “Presidential photographs represented elite leaders and became prominent contexts in which the implications of new visual values played out,” she writes. She begins with daguerreotypes from the 1840s depicting John Quincy Adams, whom, she notes, often lamented that they were “hideous.” (The technology was replaced by film in the 1880s.) She then moves to the “snapshot” presidents around the turn of the century, and writes of how the 1901 assassination of William McKinley led to a public “morbid race to publish his last photographs.” The “candid camera” era that followed found Herbert Hoover and FDR to be the first presidents to have an official White House photographer document their daily activities. Finnegan’s discussion of contemporary methods zeros in on the Obama administration’s use of Flickr, which allowed presidential photographer Pete Souza to share more than 6,000 images on social media. Broad in scope and rich in anecdotal detail, this will please photography and history buffs. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

"Entertaining yet informative. . . Photographic Presidents is an excellent book that brings context and depth to certain decision points within history and how photography shaped them. It takes on a concept often overlooked by scholars as simply there, and moves it front and center into the discussion." —Congress & the Presidency

"Well-written and engaging . . . What will be the next step in how presidents become photographic? Finnegan cannot—and does not try to—answer that question, but the fact that the question resonates in my head after putting down her book is a testament to how thought-provoking Photographic Presidents is." —Journal of American History

"Very interesting and informative . . . Finnegan has covered a lot of ground in this well-illustrated book. She traces the development of the photographic medium and techniques with the history of visual communications and the image of the presidents, and has done it extremely well." —Journal of American Culture

"Today, the camera, the press, and the presidency are inextricably linked. But how did we get here and, more importantly, how does that evolution inform the present visual and rhetorical landscape? Based on her longstanding research, writing and commentary as a 'presidential visual scholar,' there is no one better equipped to compose this picture than Cara Finnegan. This narrative weaves the evolution of a technology, a communications medium, and the highest office in the land into a vivid historical panorama. In current times, in an atmosphere in which visual politics can be all too affecting and effecting, Photographic Presidents places the visual presidency into a necessary frame."—Michael Shaw, Publisher, Reading the Pictures

​"A valuable resource for students of both American politics and the history of photography." —Booklist

"Informative, knowledgeable, and enjoyable . . . . Photographic Presidents is a valuable addition to presidential history." —Foreword Reviews

"Captivating . . . . Broad in scope and rich in anecdotal detail, this will please photography and history buffs." —Publishers Weekly

"Fascinating." —Air Mail

From the Publisher