Partners with the Sun: South Carolina Photographers, 1840 - 1940.
first edition
University of South Carolina Press for the South Carolina Library with the Assistance of The Caroline McKissick Dial Publication
by Teal, Harvey S.
University of South Carolina Press for the South Carolina Library with the Assistance of The Caroline McKissick Dial Publication Fund and the University Caroliniana Society, (2001). First Edition. Large octavo, black cloth (hardcover), 415 pp. Fine in a Fine dust jacket. From dust jacket: Partners with the Sun recounts the history of the men and women who captured a century of South Carolina images, from photography’s introduction in the state through 1940. Beginning with William H. Ellet, a South Carolina College professor who was the first in the state to experiment with the new technology, Harvey S. Teal records carefully researched biographical information about six hundred professional photographers who worked throughout South Carolina. He showcases their work with more than three hundred examples of daguerroetypes, ambrotypes, tintypes, cartes de visite, cabinets, stereographs, panoramas, and other types of photographs. While the images provide a one-hundred-year pictorial panorama of South Carolina, the biographical entries rescue from obscurity the men and women who made a business of recording the state’s landscapes, streetscapes, architecutre, people, social life, and economic endeavors. Dividing the century into historical periods, Teal groups the photographers by the towns in which they operated studios. Additionally, he profiles amateur photogaphers who particpated in significant projects, such as those who produced the more than three thousand photographs taken of the Penn School on St. Helena Island in Beaufort County. In response to the increasing interest in female photographers, African American photographers, photography as a business, and the production of picture postcards, sterographs, and panoramas, Teal devotes a chapter to each of these topics. He highlights local and national events of the century and chronicles advances in photographic technology, to place the photographers in their historical context. More than half the images reproduced in the book are published here for the first time. Most of the others have not appeared in print since the beginning of the twentieth century. Numerous photographers’ logos and back marks in the book provide valuable information for dating and attributing photographers. (Inventory #: 60818bd)