American Photography: A Century of Images — Season 1, Episode 1: The Developing Image, 1900-1934
Documentary • 56 min • 1 season, 3 episodes • ★ 8.0/10
Episode synopsis
Inexpensive hand-held cameras gave ordinary people the opportunity to create their own visual images. Suddenly pictures were a part of our daily lives: on passports, postcards, in the developing picture press, and in science. World War I photographs even convinced many reluctant Americans that they had a stake in this distant war, and advertisers embraced photography because of its ability to create a fantasy that seemed to be a plausible reality. By the end of the 1920s, photographs—little flat pictures that came to represent the truth—had made their way into virtually every corner of contemporary life.
About American Photography: A Century of Images
Three-part series exploring the impact that photography has had on American life in the twentieth century. The story of pictures we have taken and where they have taken us.