L’histoire photographique de l’Amérique selon Robert Taft (Photography and the American Scene, 1938) by François BRUNET

“…Two implicit concepts at work in the book are isolated: the photograph as “event”, i.e. as history-making, the two main examples being Mathew Brady’s portraits of Abraham Lincoln, supposed to have influenced the 1860 election, and William H. Jackson’s 1871 photographs of Yellowstone, supposed to have “won” the passing of the National Park bill; and then the photograph as “document”, i.e. as visual evidence of the American “scene”, which Taft encourages his reader to collect and study as if to promote the popular practice of history. …”
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