A Flood of Pictures

The Formation of a Picture Culture in the United States

Michael Leja

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Hardback

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English

University of Pennsylvania Press
31 July 2025

History of art & design styles: c 1800 to c 1900; Art & design styles: Modernist design & Bauhaus; Prints & printmaking; Photography & photographs; History of the Americas

Explores how the widespread circulation of pictures reshaped a nineteenth-century US culture that was accustomed to printed and spoken words

When and how did pictures start to permeate everyday lives in the United States? What happened to those daily lives when they did? And what happened to pictures in the process? In this full-color, heavily illustrated book, Michael Leja traces the beginnings of a transformation in cultural life in the United States: when the widespread circulation of pictures reshaped a culture accustomed to printed and spoken words.

In the three decades before the Civil War, the ordinary experiences of a large segment of the population came to include pictures of many kinds, including illustrations in books, pamphlets, and newspapers; photographs on cards; full-sheet printed pictures collected in scrapbooks or albums or hung on walls; posters and broadsheets; spectacular paintings displayed in theatrical venues; and more. Pictures supplemented verbal texts—and in some cases overshadowed them—for conveying news and information; portraying people, places, and events; focusing public discourse; selling things; educating and instructing; generating excitement and aesthetic gratification; promoting and disguising political agendas; shaping social identities; and building and undermining social bonds.

A Flood of Pictures recovers a time before successful pictorial formulas for mass appeal were established, before an audience habituated to consumption of pictures existed, and before pictures had become thoroughly commodified. Through its exploration of these nineteenth-century developments, the book reveals the foundations of our picture-saturated twenty-first century.

By: Michael Leja
Imprint: University of Pennsylvania Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 254mm, Width: 178mm,
ISBN: 9781512826807
ISBN 10: 1512826804
Pages: 400
Publication Date: 31 July 2025
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Michael Leja is the James and Nan Wagner Farquhar Professor of History of Art at the University of Pennsylvania.