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Charles Ellis Johnson and the Erotic Mormon Image
Mary Campbell
€ 62.46
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Description for Charles Ellis Johnson and the Erotic Mormon Image
Hardcover. Num Pages: 192 pages, illustrations. BIC Classification: HRCC99. Category: (P) Professional & Vocational. Dimension: 296 x 224 x 22. Weight in Grams: 1140.
On September 25, 1890, the fourth Mormon prophet, Wilford Woodruff, publicly instructed his followers to abandon polygamy. In doing so, he initiated a process that would fundamentally alter the Latter-day Saints and their faith. Trading the most integral elements of their belief system for national acceptance, the Mormons recreated themselves as model Americans. Mary Campbell tells the story of this remarkable religious transformation in Charles Ellis Johnson and the Erotic Mormon Image. One of the church's favorite photographers, Johnson (1857 1926) spent the 1890s and early 1900s taking pictures of Mormonism's most revered figures and sacred sites. At the same time, he did a brisk business in mail-order erotica, shooting and selling stereoviews that he referred to as his spicy pictures of girls. Situating these images and more within the religious, artistic, and legal culture of turn-of-the-century America, Campbell reveals the unexpected ways in which they worked in concert to bring the Saints back into the nation's mainstream after the scandal of polygamy. ?Engaging, interdisciplinary, and deeply researched, Charles Ellis Johnson and the Erotic Mormon Image demonstrates the profound role that pictures played in the creation of both the modern Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the modern American nation.
Product Details
Publisher
University Of Chicago Press
Format
Hardback
Publication date
2016
Condition
New
Weight
1139 g
Number of Pages
192
Place of Publication
, United States
ISBN
9780226373690
SKU
V9780226373690
Shipping Time
Usually ships in 7 to 11 working days
Ref
99-1
About Mary Campbell
Mary Campbell is assistant professor of art history at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.
Reviews for Charles Ellis Johnson and the Erotic Mormon Image
A beautiful meditation on the agency of photographs, this book on the Mormon photographer Charles Ellis Johnson is also a remarkable account of American sexuality, its rituals, and its prohibitions, down to the last strap unfurled from the last shoulder in that photograph earmarked for an eager customer in Fresno. Sexuality itself lies coquettishly hidden in almost all studies of American art except this one.
Alexander Nemerov, author of Soulmaker: The Times of Lewis Hine Boasting the inclusion of over eighty images and large format printing with semigloss pages, the book is gorgeous. Fortunately, the packaging befits the thought and writing. . .beautifully written and already a breath of fresh air for a discipline that has all too often missed the historical significance of material media practices. . .smart, enlightening, and thoroughly novel. And these contributions, coupled with extensive historical research, are more than welcome.
Journal of Mormon History In Johnson's vast stereographic archive, Campbell has a treasure trove, which she frequently alchemizes into interpretive gold on everything from Victorian tourism to chorus-girl sexuality to Mormon historical memory to women's rights activism. Hers is a visually sumptuous book, filled with close and often sparkling explications of particular images. . .rich and fascinating.
Mormon Studies Review The story of Johnson and his art remains a compelling microhistory of his faith, and casts into illuminating light a story often told through abstractions. . .a fascinating book.
Nova Religio Charles Ellis Johnson and the Erotic Mormon Image is brilliant in its persuasive interpretation of the photography of Johnson as an act of repositioning the Latter-day Saints in mainstream American society. Campbell's extremely compelling analysis will have tremendous appeal to scholars in history of art, religious studies, American studies, and history, as well as to a larger reading public. Beautifully written and engaging, this book has my strongest endorsement.
Sally M. Promey, author of Painting Religion in Public: John Singer Sargent's Triumph of Religion at the Boston Public Library
Alexander Nemerov, author of Soulmaker: The Times of Lewis Hine Boasting the inclusion of over eighty images and large format printing with semigloss pages, the book is gorgeous. Fortunately, the packaging befits the thought and writing. . .beautifully written and already a breath of fresh air for a discipline that has all too often missed the historical significance of material media practices. . .smart, enlightening, and thoroughly novel. And these contributions, coupled with extensive historical research, are more than welcome.
Journal of Mormon History In Johnson's vast stereographic archive, Campbell has a treasure trove, which she frequently alchemizes into interpretive gold on everything from Victorian tourism to chorus-girl sexuality to Mormon historical memory to women's rights activism. Hers is a visually sumptuous book, filled with close and often sparkling explications of particular images. . .rich and fascinating.
Mormon Studies Review The story of Johnson and his art remains a compelling microhistory of his faith, and casts into illuminating light a story often told through abstractions. . .a fascinating book.
Nova Religio Charles Ellis Johnson and the Erotic Mormon Image is brilliant in its persuasive interpretation of the photography of Johnson as an act of repositioning the Latter-day Saints in mainstream American society. Campbell's extremely compelling analysis will have tremendous appeal to scholars in history of art, religious studies, American studies, and history, as well as to a larger reading public. Beautifully written and engaging, this book has my strongest endorsement.
Sally M. Promey, author of Painting Religion in Public: John Singer Sargent's Triumph of Religion at the Boston Public Library