News Art: Manipulated Photographs from the Burns Archive - Hardcover

As a historian I was drawn to collecting photography in my search for evidence of important episodes in history that could be visually verified. As a collector I appreciated unique works and began by collecting daguerreotypes and other early one of-a-kind images. Painted photographs also represented unique works of art that melded photography and painting. In the late 1970s I began to collect photojournalism because eyewitness accounts appealed to my sense of history. The photo-diagram/sketch images not only depicted dramatic events but also artistically and vividly illustrated the unfolding of each episode. These composite and multimedia photographs are true unique works of art.

MANIPULATED PHOTOGRAPHS IN MEMORIAL PHOTOGRAPHY: TO MAKE THE DEAD ALIVE Postmortem and spirit photography drew my attention to a wide range of manipulated photographs. The superimposition of ghosts and spirits was a popular subject in the 1860s and 70s. The 1869 trial of William Mumler proved he used two negatives to create his spirit images; contrived hoaxes. This was the first episode in a continuing chapter of faked images made to fool the public. The exposé alerted the public to photography's potential for abuse. Manipulation of photographs was a critical aspect of American memorial photography. In both Forgotten Marriage: The Painted Tintype & The Decorative Frame and Sleeping Beauty: Memorial Photography in America, Sara and I published memorial photographs that illustrated the ability to make to the dead "alive," or at least appear to be. In the early painted tintype era, 1870-1890, as working class families began to create their gallery of ancestors, it was a common practice to paint and frame this composite style of family portraiture. History of Painted Photography This is the third book in the Burns Archive's series of texts on painted photography. In 1995, we published Forgotten Marriage: The Painted Tintype & The Decorative Frame, 1860-1910: A Lost Chapter in American Portraiture. This first treatise describes the overpainting of tintypes and other photographs of relatives, to create a personal gallery of ancestors. In 2006, we released Geisha: A Photographic History, 1872-1912, which describes the creation of painted Japanese photographs for the tourist trade. Though many of these photographs were produced in multiple copies, all were individually painted and are unique beautiful artworks. Exhibitions of both these subjects have been shown in the United States and abroad. We also prepared the exhibition Color Before Color, a historical survey of painting photographs to create "colored images." It surveys images from the painted daguerreotype to the coloring of images popular in the 1920-1940 era. Photograph collecting offers many surprises, and we hope to continue to uncover new subjects that will be the sources of future volumes.

Stanley B. Burns, MD, FACS, a practicing New York City ophthalmic surgeon, is also an internationally distinguished photo-historian, author, lecturer, curator, and collector. He has written 17 award-winning photohistory books and hundreds of articles, curated dozens of exhibitions, and collected 800,000 images, including the most comprehensive compilation of early hand-colored photography. In 1995, he published Forgotten Marriage: The Painted Tintype and the Decorative Frame, an exposé on the art of painting photographs that explored the close relationship that hand-colored photographs have to paintings. In 2006, he penned Geisha: A Photographic History 1872–1912, documenting the painted photographs of Japan, concentrating on the portrayal of Geisha and their traditional arts and distinguishing them from the prostitute classes.

Sara Cleary-Burns has been involved in the art world for many years. Since 1985 she has chosen to concentrate on photography as art, specializing in early hand-colored images in their original frames, as well as manipulated photographs. In pursuit of these interests she turned her hand to mounting and presenting museum exhibitions, such as the highly successful Forgotten Marriage, which toured throughout the United States. As an archivist, administrator, fundraiser, and publicist, she has been involved with some of the major photographic collections of the United States.

Jeff Rosenheim is the Curator of the Department of Photographs at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. An influential advocate for photography as a significant art medium, Rosenheim was responsible for bringing to the Metropolitan the complete archives of Walker Evans and Diane Arbus. He has lectured extensively in the U.S. and abroad, and has taught at Columbia University, NYU, and Bard College.