Laughter and the Camera A Different History of Photography

The French philosopher Henri Bergson believed that laughter holds a special place in people's lives together. He identified it as a 'social gesture' that makes it possible for people in general to deal with the new and unfamiliar.This book describes the birth and triumph of photography in the 19th century from a hitherto unfamiliar perspective - that of how the new medium was laughed at.Lavishly illustrated with caricatures, cartoons and sundry satirical sources, as well as amusing writings from the period, it provides a graphic and narrative account of photography's gradual acceptance by society at large.This publication contains original material of the time; including texts by iconic writers such as Lewis Carroll and Virginia Woolf, and images by artists such as Honor� Daumier, among others