Reasoned and Unreasoned Images

Reviews / Votes

"Reasoned and Unreasoned Images is a fascinating discussion of photography in the second half of the nineteenth century. Josh Ellenbogen raises interesting questions concerning the nature of evidence that are still being discussed in current work on the philosophy of science and, in particular, the philosophy of experiment. In short, this is a first-rate piece of scholarship, with the additional bonus that it is a good read."

-Allan D. Franklin, University of Colorado, Boulder "Josh Ellenbogen offers a truly unique treatment of the nature of scientific uses of photography at the turn of the nineteenth century, one that will certainly be debated but whose value will lie in the specificity of its analysis and the originality of its argument. This will be an influential book, dealing with many contemporary issues in our understanding of photographic evidence and revealing their historical background. It has already influenced my own thinking."

-Tom Gunning, University of Chicago "Josh Ellenbogen's Reasoned and Unreasoned Images provides a significant theoretical discussion of photography's aim to capture the visible and nonvisible and, more widely, of its complex relation to human perception, cognition, and memory. . . .

[T]he journey the reader undertakes is guided by thought-provoking questions through a series of chapters that progressively build upon the previous one to form a layered work of interwoven arguments that cannot easily be pulled apart."

-Tania Woloshyn CAA Reviews "As an intellectual history of a period scientific use of photography, Reasoned and Unreasoned Images is a rich and thorough account. There is much to be learned from its careful unpacking of the intellectual correspondences of Bertillon, Galton, and Marey and the development of a scientific understanding of photography and vision that resulted."

-Blake Stimson History of Photography "[This] book is an instructive and useful read and serves the purpose of bringing together the philosophy of experiment and period photographic theory, with fascinating results."

-Kelley Wilder Isis: Journal of the History of Science Society