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The Modern Dream of Order

Victoria, Photography, and the Social Imagination
  • Eva Ehninger
Language: English
Published/Copyright: 2025
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About this book

This book redefines the history of modernity by focusing on how people used photography to affirm continuity and social stability during a time defined by rapid transition in all every field of life. By the early 1860s, commercial portrait photography had become an everyday experience. Through their daily reception and interpretation, photographs were utilized to construct and consolidate social relations and to imagine social order visually. Queen Victoria’s ubiquitous photographic presence in private and communal contexts demonstrates how the new visual media re-enforced the power of conventional concepts of order and stability. Critical reflection on this mechanism is crucial to understanding current media practices as well.

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Author / Editor information

Eva Ehninger, Professor of Modern Art History at the Institute of Art and Visual History and director of the Centre for Advanced Study inherit. heritage in transformation at Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, Germany

Publishing information
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook published on:
June 30, 2025
eBook ISBN:
9783111128412
Hardcover published on:
July 2, 2025
Hardcover ISBN:
9783111124551
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
Main content:
252
Coloured Illustrations:
127
Downloaded on 17.9.2025 from https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783111128412/html
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