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The Corporate Eye Elspeth H. Brown (Director, Centre for the Study of the United States (CSUS), University of Toronto)

The Corporate Eye By Elspeth H. Brown (Director, Centre for the Study of the United States (CSUS), University of Toronto)

Summary

She concludes that the goal uniting the various forms and applications of photographic production in that era was the increased rationalization of the modern economy through a set of interlocking managerial innovations, technologies that sought to redesign not only industrial production but the modern subject as well.

The Corporate Eye Summary

The Corporate Eye: Photography and the Rationalization of American Commercial Culture, 1884-1929 by Elspeth H. Brown (Director, Centre for the Study of the United States (CSUS), University of Toronto)

In the late nineteenth century, corporate managers began to rely on photography for everything from motion studies to employee selection to advertising. This practice gave rise to many features of modern industry familiar to us today: consulting, "scientific" approaches to business practice, illustrated advertising, and the use of applied psychology. In this imaginative study, Elspeth H. Brown examines the intersection of photography as a mass technology with corporate concerns about efficiency in the Progressive period. Discussing, among others, the work of Frederick W. Taylor, Eadweard Muybridge, Frank Gilbreth, and Lewis Hine, Brown explores this intersection through a variety of examples, including racial discrimination in hiring, the problem of photographic realism, and the gendered assumptions at work in the origins of modern marketing. She concludes that the goal uniting the various forms and applications of photographic production in that era was the increased rationalization of the modern economy through a set of interlocking managerial innovations, technologies that sought to redesign not only industrial production but the modern subject as well.

The Corporate Eye Reviews

A highly welcome contribution to the field of business history as well as American visual culture. Business History Review 2006 This highly readable, interdisciplinary book provides insights into both the history of American economic development and the history of photography. Afterimage 2006 A unique and interdisciplinary analysis of the intersection between visual and commercial culture in the USA. History of Photography 2006 The Corporate Eye is American studies and interdisciplinary cultural history at its best. Journal of American History 2006 This is a book whose 'big picture' is fully in focus. Technology and Culture 2006 Meticulous research and rich contextualization... A welcome and imaginative addition to the history of visual technologies and commercial history. Industrial Archaeology 2007

About Elspeth H. Brown (Director, Centre for the Study of the United States (CSUS), University of Toronto)

Elspeth H. Brown is an associate professor of history at the University of Toronto and the director of the Centre for the Study of the United States, Munck Centre for International Studies, University of Toronto.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. The Physiognomy of American Labor: Photography and Employee Rationalization
2. Industrial Choreography: Photography and the Standardization of Motion
3. Engineering the Subjective: Lewis W. Hine's Work Portraits and Corporate Paternalism in the 1920s
4. Rationalizing Consumption: Photography and Commercial Illustration
Conclusion
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index

Additional information

NLS9780801889707
9780801889707
0801889707
The Corporate Eye: Photography and the Rationalization of American Commercial Culture, 1884-1929 by Elspeth H. Brown (Director, Centre for the Study of the United States (CSUS), University of Toronto)
New
Paperback
Johns Hopkins University Press
2008-03-01
348
Winner of PROSE Award for Business, Management and Accounting 2006 (United States)
Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
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